How to display only the first few lines of a div (clamping)?

Question

I have a list of divs in which I display the preview of longer documents. The documents use varying font styles. So I don\'t have a constant line height. Here i

Answer 1

The algorithm to calculate all the factors perfectly using only javascript would be too complex.

With css3 there is line-clamp

But this works only on modern browsers.

p{
 margin:20px;
 overflow: hidden;
 text-overflow: ellipsis;
 display: -webkit-box;
 -webkit-line-clamp: 3;
 -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
}

DEMO

http://jsfiddle.net/MM29r/

this allows you to set the number of lines you want to display before adding the 3 dots.

now you want 300px... so:

var p=document.getElementsByTagName('p')[0],
lineheight=parseInt(window.getComputedStyle(p).getPropertyValue("line-height"));
var lines=Math.floor(300/lineheight);
p.style['-webkit-line-clamp']=lines;

so this gives you an element that is 300px or less

DEMOS

http://jsfiddle.net/MM29r/1/

http://jsfiddle.net/MM29r/2/

NEEDED VALUES: line-height

Now if you want to make the box exactly 300px height just add margins or paddings to the paragraphs.But that depends on your preferences.

if you have some questions just ask.

Note

every js function that adds 3 dots at the end by calculating the words would be to resources intensive to apply in a real world website.

a better approach would be to calculate every paragraph one time and add the clamped result to a db or store it in the static website.

but then again every browser displays fonts in a different way.

EDIT

Here is a different way to display partial content. Using max-height & -webkit-column-count

https://stackoverflow.com/a/20691677/2450730

DEMO

http://jsfiddle.net/HNF3d/10/

the support is slightly higher than line-clamp and you are abe to display the whole content.

EDIT2

Fading image at the bottom.

p{
 width:300px;
 max-height:300px;
 overflow:hidden;
}
p:before{
 content:"";
 display:block;
 position:absolute;
 margin-top:240px;
 background:-webkit-linear-gradient(top,rgba(255,255,255,0) 0%,rgba(255,255,255,1) 80%);
 height:60px;
 width:300px;
}

http://jsfiddle.net/MM29r/9/

EDIT3

fading image old browsers (use real images links, not base64)

http://jsfiddle.net/MM29r/13/