asp.net continuous string wrap

Question

Okay, so it seems, for some reason (I might be doing it wrong, obviously), that I have some problem wrapping continuous lines, using Asp.net.

Let's say I have 800 pixels worth of the "m" character, well, my table cell gets extended to that length. I don't want that, I want the cell to automatically break the continuous line after 300px.

To do that, I tried to apply the word-wrap:break-word css style. Didn't work. Now what?

Do I parse the line, to insert explicit linebreaks after a certain number of characters? That doesn't seem very clean to me. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Do you really have 800px of "m" or is that just test data? If that is real data then yes you will have to create some whitespace in there somewhere. HTML parsers don't wrap text that overflows an element unless that text has spaces in it that allow the text to be wrapped.

If the m's are a test string and do not reflect real data I would suggest you use some dummy text (like Lorem Ipsum) to test with as it has spacing more akin to regular text.

Answer 2

You can insert a <wbr> (little known html element) every few m's. It's not 100% compatible with everything, but it works in most browsers:

<wbr> (word break) means: "The browser may insert a line break here, if it wishes." It the browser does not think a line break necessary nothing happens.

So you would do something like this:

mmmmmmmmm<wbr>mmmmmmmmmm<wbr>mmmmmmmmmmm<wbr> (etc.)

Here's some more info: http://www.quirksmode.org/oddsandends/wbr.html