Wrap Long Links with CSS
Developers have loads to think about when creative websites, and much of that is ensuring child elements don't stretch past the parent width. We worry about images, IFRAMEs, and other popular elements pushing past their parent width, but then we see a basic link with a long URL and we look down, just shaking our heads. Why doesn't the URL just break?
To prevent that issue, you can apply the following CSS:
/*
Problem:
<a href="">//someurl.com/a-really-really-really-really-really-really-really-really-really-long-url</a>
*/
a {
word-wrap: break-word;
}
Should this be a global setting for A elements, or simply something that we as developers should set? Surely this is an annoyance we shouldn't have to deal with, right?
![Regular Expressions for the Rest of Us]()
Sooner or later you'll run across a regular expression. With their cryptic syntax, confusing documentation and massive learning curve, most developers settle for copying and pasting them from StackOverflow and hoping they work. But what if you could decode regular expressions and harness their power? In...
![How I Stopped WordPress Comment Spam]()
I love almost every part of being a tech blogger: learning, preaching, bantering, researching. The one part about blogging that I absolutely loathe: dealing with SPAM comments. For the past two years, my blog has registered 8,000+ SPAM comments per day. PER DAY. Bloating my database...
![Introducing MooTools Dotter]()
It's best practice to provide an indicator of some sort when performing an AJAX request or processing that takes place in the background. Since the dawn of AJAX, we've been using colorful spinners and imagery as indicators. While I enjoy those images, I am...
![MooTools History Plugin]()
One of the reasons I love AJAX technology so much is because it allows us to avoid unnecessary page loads. Why download the header, footer, and other static data multiple times if that specific data never changes? It's a waste of time, processing, and bandwidth. Unfortunately...
You have to be carefull when using it in tables, because it causes the table to split the links all the time, it’s annoying. I prefer to set word-wrap on each case, most of time reseting this, is worst than setting.
Is tables the only place where it breaks? If so, a table a {} override seems like a good solution?
Remember though that if you have long words also they will also break if I remember correctly.
Chris, that would be true if you set the CSS style on the
body/pelement. This will only effect links, hence the setting of it on theaelement.I commonly run into this when dealing with dynamic content. I feel it should be automatically set for the anchor tag. We could just implement this in a reset included in the stylesheet that _most_ projects start off with. Double-edge sword I guess.
I have had success with
word-break: break-all;This example doesn’t working in Firefox 30.0.
After you get it working in Firefox, be sure to test Blackberry and Netscape next.
I’d rather [truncate them](https://github.com/varemenos/verepo/blob/master/src/layout/_truncate.scss) than use word-wrapping. Don’t ask why, personal choice.
what about the CSS ellipsis ? I find it more handy.
a { display: block; width: 180px; overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; text-overflow: ellipsis; }Actually, I do exactly the opposite. I think you shouldn’t wrap links like that at all.
Imagine if you had a link at the end of a sentence that breaks to the next line. Now, you actually have two links. One to the right of your screen, and one to the left. But they are the same link. Confusing and ugly, in my opinion.
Better is to white-space: nowrap all the links in a content section, and provide a max-width (which could be dynamic for various screen sizes). And then probably make it visually attractive by letting it fade out or add ellipsis. Like @Symphony shows in the above comment.
Breaking a link in two parts feels kinda like breaking a word with a hyphen on a place where it isn’t logical/allowed.
Agree with @Jelmer. A progressive reveal pattern seems most useful. For ease of implementation, we should look not at the tag but using CSS ellip for style and the title attribute as a semantic way to provide additional information for a basic tooltip.
Similarly, we could lookup the site title dynamically and embed it where the really-really-long-a-tag-body-text-node-goes, passing more link juice through on the site title, assuming required use of the A href attribute and the link is not a nofollow link.
Consider my case on mobile devices, from where I get 80% of my traffic, I want the client to see the entire link and judge if it’s safe or not.
Since screen width is reduced on mobile, breaking the link on two lines doesn’t leave one right of the screen and other to the left, but actually makes it easier to be clicked.
This is just for my case, ellipsis doesn’t suit everywhere.
guys is there similar/simple (without JS) solution for multiline text ?