[css3-text] Suggestion for text-overflow:shrink

I'd like to propose a new value for the text-overflow property:
shrink.  This value would, when text overflows its container, reduce
the size of the text using whatever methods the UA deems most
appropriate (direct font-size reduction, reducing the space between
letters, etc.) until the text no longer overflows.

This would be useful on my current project, where I have a fixed-width
dropdown menu that takes its heading from the selection you make.
It's very possible for text that reasonably fits within the menu (at
its normal size) to overflow the heading (at an increased font-size
and slightly wider font).  Flowing down to a separate line is not
possible for design reasons, and text-overflow:ellipsis is
unacceptable for some of the menus (such as the date selector) that
need to present their entire value to be sensical.

This property does have the possibility of rendering text completely
unreadable by shrinking it too much, of course.  I'm not sure if this
is actually a problem in practice, or if a simple warning along the
lines of "Only use this value when the text is expected to overflow
the box only slightly." would be sufficient.

(Better ideas for how to solve my given use-case would be appreciated
as well, if they exist.)

~TJ

Received on Tuesday, 6 October 2009 14:25:41 UTC