text-overflow: ellipsis and flex

There are a few problems with your layout:

  1. text-overflow: ellipsis only works with display: block and display: inline-block containers. It's failing because you have .inner set to display: flex.

  2. text-overflow: ellipsis must include white-space: nowrap in the same declaration. It's missing in your .inner rule.

  3. ellipsis works on text, not block-level elements

Try this:

* {
  margin: 15px 1px
}
.outer {
  border: 1px solid red;
  display: flex;
  width: 400px;
}
.inner {
  /* display: flex */          /* removed */
  min-width: 0;
  overflow: hidden;
  flex: 1;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
  white-space: nowrap;         /* new */
}
.child {
  display: inline;             /* adjusted */
  white-space: nowrap;
  flex: 1;
}
.btn {
  border: 1px solid green;
  flex: 0 0 auto;
}
<div class="outer">
  <div class="inner">
    <div class="child">child 1</div>
    <div class="child">child 2</div>
    <div class="child">child 3</div>
    <div class="child">child 4</div>
    <div class="child">child 5</div>
    <div class="child">child 6</div>
    <div class="child">child 7</div>
  </div>
  <div class="btn">My big big big button!</div>
</div>

More about text-overflow: ellipsis here: Applying an ellipsis to multiline text


Here is JS approach where you could find which child div have position that overflows with position of button, and hide all divs after that div and append ... after that div.

var child = $('.child');
var btn = $('.btn');
var oW = $('.outer').innerWidth();
var w = btn.outerWidth();
var c = oW - w;
var last;

child.each(function() {
  var l = $(this).position().left + $(this).outerWidth();
  if (l > c) {
    if (last == undefined) last = $(this).index() - 1;
  }
})

$('.child:gt(' + last + ')').css('display', 'none');
$('.child:eq(' + last + ')').after(' ...')
* {
  margin: 15px 1px
}
.outer {
  border: 1px solid red;
  display: flex;
  width: 400px;
}
.inner {
  overflow: hidden;
  white-space: nowrap;
  flex: 1;
}
.child {
  border: 1px solid blue;
  display: inline-block;
}
.btn {
  border: 1px solid green;
}
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div class="outer">
  <div class="inner">
    <div class="child">child 1</div>
    <div class="child">child 2</div>
    <div class="child">child 3</div>
    <div class="child">child 4</div>
    <div class="child">child 5</div>
    <div class="child">child 6</div>
    <div class="child">child 7</div>
  </div>
  <div class="btn">My big big big button!</div>
</div>

Tags:

Javascript

Html

Css

Flexbox

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