How do I determine if truncation is being applied in my style through JS?

Question

I am applying truncation using CSS styles:

.yui-skin-sam td:not(.yui-dt-editable) .yui-dt-liner{
    white-space: nowrap;
    overflow: hidden;
    text-overflow: ellipsis;
    -ms-text-overflow: ellipsis;        
    -o-text-overflow: ellipsis;
    -moz-binding: url('ellipsis.xml#ellipsis');     
}

.yui-skin-sam td[class~=yui-dt-editable] .yui-dt-liner{
    white-space: nowrap;
    overflow: hidden;
    text-overflow: ellipsis;
    -ms-text-overflow: ellipsis;        
    -o-text-overflow: ellipsis;
}

(Sidenote: I'm not sure if this is the best way to write my CSS. This is a Firefox specific workaround since truncation on Firefox only sort-of works).

I want a tool-tip to appear over text that is truncated. How do I detect if text is truncated so that I can display a tool-tip?

Answer 1

Keep in mind that CSS never alter the DOM!!!

jQuery Snippets:

$(function() {
    $('a.link').each(function(e) {
        var link = $(this).text();
        if ( link.length > 100) {
            $(this).attr('title', link );
        }
    });
});

Assuming you have links

<a class="link" href="" >the brown fox jumps over the lazy dog</a>

the above code wil produce

    <a class="link" href="" title="the brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" >
     the brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
    </a>

the text-overflow: ellipsis; property will do the rest as you know!

---

GOING AHEAD:

there is a small plugin here

I wanted to be able to use this feature in all browsers, so I wrote a small jQuery plugin in order to support Firefox. To use, just call ellipsis() on a jQuery object. For example:

$("span").ellipsis();

• http://ajaxian.com/archives/text-overflow-for-firefox-via-jquery