Text-overflow ellipsis on left side
How about something like this jsFiddle? It uses the direction, text-align, and text-overflow to get the ellipsis on the left. According to MDN, there may be the possibility of specifying the ellipsis on the left in the future with the left-overflow-type value however it's considered to still be experimental.
p {
white-space: nowrap;
overflow: hidden;
/* "overflow" value must be different from "visible" */
text-overflow: ellipsis;
width: 170px;
border: 1px solid #999;
direction: rtl;
text-align: left;
}<p>first > second > third<br /> second > third > fourth > fifth > sixth<br /> fifth > sixth > seventh > eighth > ninth</p>Why not just using direction:rtl;
I finally had to crack and do something in JavaScript. I was hoping that someone would come up with a hail-mary CSS solution but people seem to just be up-voting the answer that should be correct if it weren't for the Chrome bugs. j08691 can have the bounty for his work.
<html>
<head>
<style>
#container {
width: 200px;
border: 1px solid blue;
}
#container div {
width: 100%;
overflow: hidden;
white-space: nowrap;
}
</style>
<script>
function trimRows() {
var rows = document.getElementById('container').childNodes;
for (var i=0, row; row = rows[i]; i++) {
if (row.scrollWidth > row.offsetWidth) {
var textNode = row.firstChild;
var value = '...' + textNode.nodeValue;
do {
value = '...' + value.substr(4);
textNode.nodeValue = value;
} while (row.scrollWidth > row.offsetWidth);
}
}
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload='trimRows();'>
<div id="container" >
<div>first > second > third</div>
<div>second > third > fourth > fifth > sixth</div>
<div>fifth > sixth > seventh > eighth > ninth</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Fiddle