tags:

views:

2075

answers:

3

I'd like to ensure that there's never a line break between a radio button and the start of its adjacent label. However, I want text within the label to be allowed to wrap. Is this possible? You can see my failed attempts by rendering the following HTML:

<html>
 <head>
   <style type="text/css">
.box {
  border: solid gray 2px;
  width: 200px;
  margin: 5px;
}
.chopped {
  overflow: hidden;
}
   </style>
 </head>
<body>

 The boxes need to be fixed-width, so long content needs to be wrapped, as
 seen in the first box below. And if someone tries to post a ridiculously
 long string without any spaces, we need it to be truncated, rather than
 extend beyond the edge of the box -- the problem is visible in the second box:

 <div class="box">
  <input type="radio"/>
  <label>This is a really long string with no spaces</label>
 </div>

 <div class="box">
  <input type="radio"/>
  <label>This_is_a_really_long_string_with_no_spaces</label>
 </div>

 <hr/>

 So I add "overflow: hidden", and things are somewhat better, but I still
 don't like how the second box has a line break between the radio button and
 its label:

 <div class="chopped box">
  <input type="radio"/>
  <label>This is a really long string with no spaces</label>
 </div>

 <div class="chopped box">
  <input type="radio"/>
  <label>This_is_a_really_long_string_with_no_spaces</label>
 </div>

 <hr/>

 If I add &lt;nobr&gt;, the radio buttons are next to their labels, and so
 the unspaced string now looks perfect. However, this breaks the first
 string (the one with spaces), since it no longer wraps:

 <div class="chopped box">
  <nobr>
    <input type="radio"/>
    <label>This is a really long string with no spaces</label>
  </nobr>
 </div>
 <div class="chopped box">
  <nobr>
    <input type="radio"/>
    <label>This_is_a_really_long_string_with_no_spaces</label>
  </nobr>
 </div>

</body>
</html>
A: 

have you tried white-space:nowrap; inside your .chopped definition?

bendewey
Putting white-space:nowrap on the entire div will cause the really long string that has spaces in it to stop wrapping.
JacobM
+4  A: 

First, move the radio buttons inside your labels. This adds the nice feature that you can select the radio buttons by clicking the text. Then add a span around the text.

<div class="chopped box">
 <label>
  <input type="radio"/>
  <span class="wrappable">This is a really long string with no spaces</span>
 </label>
</div>

<div class="chopped box">
 <label>
  <input type="radio"/>
  <span class="wrappable">This_is_a_really_long_string_with_no_spaces</span>
 </label>
</div>

Second, add the following style to your css:

label {
    white-space:nowrap;
}

.wrappable {
    white-space:normal;
}

The white-space style on the label prevents the linebreak between the radio button and the text, and the span around the text allows it to wrap just within the text.

JacobM
This could be turned inside out as well: use div.radioinput where the label is, and use the label in place of span.wrappable.
Andrew Vit
Oh, sure, and that might make more semantic sense in terms of the label being the wrapper around the text, but then you lose the cool "click on the label text to select the radiobutton" feature (you can get that feature back by giving the radio button an id and using "for" in the label).
JacobM
A: 

If you don't mind the less-neat markup, you can get what you want by simply eliminating the white space between the <input> and <label> text.

<div class="chopped box">
    <label><input type="radio"/>This is a really long string with no spaces</label>
</div>

<div class="chopped box">
    <label><input type="radio"/>This_is_a_really_long_string_with_no_spaces</label>
</div>

(<label>s placed around <input>s per JacobM's suggestion.)

If you want a bit of room between the <input> and the first character of the label, use a non-breaking space (&nbsp;) entity.

David Kolar