CSS text ellipsis when using variable width divs

Question

I'm wondering if there is any way do have text in a floating div gain ellipsis when the parent div and neighboring div don't allow enough room. For example:

<style>
.parent-div {
    width: 100%;
    border: 1px;
    padding: 4px;
}
.text-div {
    float: right;
    white-space: nowrap;
    overflow: hidden;
    text-overflow: ellipsis;    
}
.icon-div {
    float: left;
}
</style>
<div class="parent-div">
  <div class="text-div">This is text I'd like to truncate when space doesn't permit</div>
  <div class="icon-div">X</div>
</div>

So far if I crunch the browser window, the parent div will collapse, then the white space in text-div will vanish, but when there is no more room, the ellipsis never kick in.

The only thing I can think to do is trigger an event when the window resizes and dynamically set a new fixed width on text-div, but this just feels inelegant, especially considering padding and other neighboring artifacts I'd have to subtract out to get a proper width.

Any thoughts on this one?

Here's a jsFiddle demo: http://jsfiddle.net/Blender/kXMz7/

Answer 1

You can use CSS3's flexible box layout to do this pretty intuitively:

.parent-div {
    display: flex;
}

.text-div {
    white-space: nowrap;
    overflow: hidden;
    text-overflow: ellipsis;    

    min-width: 0;
}

.icon-div {
    flex: 1;
}​

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/Blender/kXMz7/1/

Answer 2

My company does not support CSS3 yet, but I was able to solve the problem with another solution. By applying the float attribute only to the icon div and putting it first in the HTML, the other div will stay vertically aligned while also truncating when there is not enough room.

Examples: (icon on right) http://jsfiddle.net/qftWN/, (icon on left) http://jsfiddle.net/Nr2NN/