Limit text length to n lines using CSS

Question

Is it possible to limit a text length to \"n\" lines using CSS (or cut it when overflows vertically).

text-overflow: ellipsis; only works for 1 line tex

Answer 1

I have a solution which works well but instead an ellipsis it uses a gradient. It works when you have dynamic text so you don't know if it will be long enough to need an ellipse. The advantages are that you don't have to do any JavaScript calculations and it works for variable width containers including table cells and is cross-browser. It uses a couple of extra divs, but it's very easy to implement.

Markup:

    

         content goes here
         

    

CSS:

.fade-container { /*two lines*/
    overflow: hidden;
    position: relative;
    line-height: 18px; 
    /* height must be a multiple of line-height for how many rows you want to show (height = line-height x rows) */
    height: 36px;
    -ms-hyphens: auto;
    -webkit-hyphens: auto;
    hyphens: auto;
    word-wrap: break-word;
}

.fade {
        position: absolute;
        top: 50%;/* only cover the last line. If this wrapped to 3 lines it would be 33% or the height of one line */
        right: 0;
        bottom: 0;
        width: 26px;
        background: linear-gradient(to right,  rgba(255,255,255,0) 0%,rgba(255,255,255,1) 100%);
}

blog post: http://salzerdesign.com/blog/?p=453

example page: http://salzerdesign.com/test/fade.html