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Asked: 2026-05-10T23:55:04+00:00

I have an HTML table that looks like this: ————————————————- |Column 1 |Column 2

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I have an HTML table that looks like this:

------------------------------------------------- |Column 1                   |Column 2           | ------------------------------------------------- |this is the text in column |this is the column | |one which wraps            |two test           | -------------------------------------------------

But I want it to hide the overflow. The reason here is that the text contains a link to more details, and having the ‘wrapping’ wastes lots of space in my layout. It should like this (without increasing the widths of the columns or the table, because they’ll go off the screen/create a horizontal scrollbar otherwise):

------------------------------------------------- |Column 1                   |Column 2           | ------------------------------------------------- |this is the text in column |this is the column | -------------------------------------------------

I’ve tried lots of different CSS techniques to try to get this, but I can’t get it to turn out right. Mootables is the only thing I’ve found that does this: http://joomlicious.com/mootable/, but I can’t figure out how they do it. Does anyone know how I can do this with my own table using CSS and/or Javascript, or how Mootables does it?

Sample HTML:

<html><body> <table width='300px'> <tr>     <td>Column 1</td><td>Column 2</td> </tr> <tr>    <td>this is the text in column one which wraps</td>    <td>this is the column two test</td> </tr> </table></body></html>
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1 Answer

  1. Use the CSS property white-space: nowrap and overflow: hidden on your td.

    Update

    Just saw your comment, not sure what I was thinking, I’ve done this so many times I forgot how I do it. This is approach that works well in most browsers for me… rather than trying to constrain the td, I use a div inside the td that will handle the overflow instance. This has a nice side effect of being able to add your padding, margins, background colors, etc. to your div rather than trying to style the td.

    <html> <head> <style> .hideextra { white-space: nowrap; overflow: hidden; text-overflow:ellipsis; } </style> </head> <body> <table style='width: 300px'> <tr>     <td>Column 1</td><td>Column 2</td> </tr> <tr>    <td>     <div class='hideextra' style='width:200px'>         this is the text in column one which wraps</div></td>    <td>     <div class='hideextra' style='width:100px'>         this is the column two test</div></td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>

    As a bonus, IE will place an ellipsis in the case of an overflow using the browser-specific text-overflow:ellipsis style. There is a way to do the same in FireFox automatically too, but I have not tested it myself.

    Update 2

    I started using this truncation code by Justin Maxwell for several months now which works properly in FireFox too.

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