In centered h1
elements, if the text falls on multiple lines, line breaks make the text look like this:
This is a header that takes
Late to this party, but here's my approach. I get the initial element height (any elements with the class balance_lines
, in the code below), then incrementally shrink the width of the element. Once the height of the element changes, I've gone too far. The step before that should have lovely roughly-equal line lengths.
$('.balance_lines').each(function(){
var currentHeight = $(this).height();
var thisHeight = currentHeight;
var currentWidth = $(this).width();
var newWidth = currentWidth;
// Try shrinking width until height changes
while (thisHeight == currentHeight) {
var testWidth = newWidth - 10;
$(this).width(testWidth);
thisHeight = $(this).height();
if (thisHeight == currentHeight) {
newWidth = testWidth;
} else {
break;
}
}
$(this).width(newWidth);
});
You can see this code in action on the homepage at apollopad.com.
Late to this party, but here's my approach. I get the initial element height (any elements with the class balance_lines, in the code below), then incrementally shrink the width of the element. Once the height of the element changes, I've gone too far. The step before that should have lovely roughly-equal line lengths
I would solve it using only strict JavaScript, going this way:
1. put a class named 'truncate' to h1 tags you want to break
2. configure the javascript code on your needs knowing that
I wrote the code very quickly so it must be better tested for bugs,
but it can be a starting point I think.
I'm not using jQuery in this code to keep the code light and to avoid dependencies.
I think I'm using all cross-browser commands (cannot test it I've got only linux now). However any correction for cross-browser compatibility task (included the use of jQUery if requested) might be easy.
Here is the code:
<html>
<head>
<style>
h1 {background-color: yellow;}
#hiddenDiv {background-color: yellow; display: table-cell; visibility:hidden;}
</style>
<script>
var MAXCOUNT = 20;
var COUNT_SPACES = false;
var EXACT = false;
var COUNT_PUNCTUATION = true;
var BLOCKS_CLASS = 'truncate';
window.onload = function ()
{
var hidden = document.getElementById('hiddenDiv');
if (hidden == null)
{
hidden = document.createElement('div');
hidden.id = 'hiddenDiv';
document.body.appendChild(hidden);
}
var blocks = document.getElementsByClassName(BLOCKS_CLASS);
for (var i=0; i<blocks.length; i++)
{
var block = blocks[i];
var text = block.innerHTML;
var truncate = '';
var html_tag = false;
var special_char = false;
maxcount = MAXCOUNT;
for (var x=0; x<maxcount; x++)
{
var previous_char = (x>0) ? text.charAt(x-1) : '';
var current_char = text.charAt(x);
// Closing HTML tags
if (current_char == '>' && html_tag)
{
html_tag = false;
maxcount++;
continue;
}
// Closing special chars
if (current_char == ';' && special_char)
{
special_char = false;
maxcount++;
continue;
}
// Jumping HTML tags
if (html_tag)
{
maxcount++;
continue;
}
// Jumping special chars
if (special_char)
{
maxcount++;
continue;
}
// Checking for HTML tags
if (current_char == '<')
{
var next = text.substring(x,text.indexOf('>')+1);
var regex = /(^<\w+[^>]*>$)/gi;
var matches = regex.exec(next);
if (matches[0])
{
html_tag = true;
maxcount++;
continue;
}
}
// Checking for special chars
if (current_char == '&')
{
var next = text.substring(x,text.indexOf(';')+1);
var regex = /(^&#{0,1}[0-9a-z]+;$)/gi;
var matches = regex.exec(next);
if (matches[0])
{
special_char = true;
maxcount++;
continue;
}
}
// Shrink multiple white spaces into a single white space
if (current_char == ' ' && previous_char == ' ')
{
maxcount++;
continue;
}
// Jump new lines
if (current_char.match(/\n/))
{
maxcount++;
continue;
}
if (current_char == ' ')
{
// End of the last word
if (x == maxcount-1 && !EXACT) { break; }
// Must I count white spaces?
if ( !COUNT_SPACES ) { maxcount++; }
}
// Must I count punctuation?
if (current_char.match(/\W/) && current_char != ' ' && !COUNT_PUNCTUATION)
{
maxcount++;
}
// Adding this char
truncate += current_char;
// Must I cut exactly?
if (!EXACT && x == maxcount-1) { maxcount++; }
}
hidden.innerHTML = '<h1><nobr>'+truncate+'</nobr></h1>';
block.style.width = hidden.offsetWidth+"px";
}
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<center>
<h1 class="truncate">
This is a header that
takes up two lines
</h1>
<br>
<h1 class="truncate">
This is a header that takes
up three lines because it
is really, really long
</h1>
<br>
<h1>
This is a header pretty short
or pretty long ... still undecided
which in any case is not truncated!
</h1>
</center>
</body>
</html>
And here is a demo of that: http://jsfiddle.net/6rtdF/
The CSS Text 4 draft proposes text-wrap: balance
, but I don't think any browser implements it yet.
In the meantime, you can use Adobe's jQuery plugin (demo): https://github.com/adobe-webplatform/balance-text