What is the logic of the selection highlighting overflowing beyond the parent element?
In the attached screenshot, the top one is what I have currently, and the bottom one is a Photoshopped mockup of what I want to achieve.
To me it seems that the selection highlighting is almost largely random; I have not been able to find any definitive resources that explain what makes selection highlighting behave in which ways.
What should I keep in mind in terms of CSS and DOM when wanting to keep the selection highlighting reasonable?
Interestingly, I've wondered why SO doesn't have something like this so it's easier to copy code off an question/answer.
Actually, SO does have contained highlighting in the <code> blocks relying on overflow: auto;. <blockquotes> do not have contained highlighting.
Anyway, it appears there are a few ways to solve this problem (though, I'm sure there might be more). Use one of the following CSS rules to limit the highlighting of text to a specific element.
overflow: hidden; or overflow:auto;
position: relative;
float:left; or float:right;
The working example below shows all four methods at work. Some are easier to work with depending on your needs.
Working Example: http://jsfiddle.net/TFvYu/4/
Sources
CSS text selection color overflows outside box
HTML/CSS How to prevent highlighting text from spanning entire width of page in google chrome
Related
I'm making a rich text editor which is like a clone of Google Docs. For reasons I won't get into here, each line in the text editor is wrapped into its own div container. For example, if there's 3 lines of text, there will be 3 child "line nodes" (rendered as an unstyled div) in the text editor. And within each line node there are inline span elements to control styling such as Bold, Italic, etc.
The issue I'm having is I can't understand why there is an unsightly vertical gap of whitespace between each line when selecting text over multiple lines. I am using Draft.js for this, but from what I can see it shouldn't make a difference; there's no styling or margins applied. I've even tried making every line div and its span elements exactly the same height but the problem persists.
My guess is this is caused by some native browser behaviour. All I really care about though is: can I "fix" it? I mean, I know it's possible because Google Docs doesn't have this spacing issue when selecting text... But then again it uses a completely custom rendering engine with custom cursors too. Thanks for any suggestions
edit: so a temporary workaround I've found (see image below) is to reduce the height of each div and span to a fixed value (in this case, height: 16.4px). But for obvious reasons, this isn't an ideal solution. I'm still looking for a "proper" way to implement whatever styling I want and not have these gaps appear between adjacent divs when selecting text
I believe your talking about line-height in which you can control the space between two elements / texts.
Try it out below:
div {
line-height:100px;
}
<div>Hello World!</div>
<div>How are ya?</div>
Thank you for all the suggestions. Turns out this is quite a challenging issue and there's very little (if anything) that can be done with pure CSS. Only the height attribute of div or span elements appear to have any visible impact on text selection. Inspecting the Google Docs elements reveals they use their own custom selection engine:
Closing this because I at least know how a solution might be implemented now, even if it would be very complex and time-consuming. Thanks again for the suggestions.
Check this out:
http://codepen.io/maxwbailey/pen/vGKBr
Now, they look fine when you aren't hovering over them, but when you hover over the <button> and <input> elements, you'll see that the text below them is bumped around a bit, while hovering over the <a> element does not cause the same effect. That's because the <button> and <input> elements are displaying as inline-blocks still (which handle borders, padding, and margins differently than regular inlines), despite the display: inline !important; line that is applied to them.
Is there anyway to override this? I know it's doable via hacks like borders with the same colour as the background, etc. but I'd really like to know if there's a way to make them display: inline properly.
Note: The problem here isn't about the text being bumped around (though that is an effect of it), it's that, despite everything saying otherwise, the browser is still forcing the button to display as an inline-block. Thanks to everyone who's provided methods to prevent the text bumping from happening, but that's not the real problem here.
Thanks!
Not sure the context of why your markup exists like this, but the issue looks like it's being triggered by setting the font-family. If you take a look at this pen - http://codepen.io/pnts/pen/Egwuo - the hover works fine without a font-family specified, but if you uncomment the line specifying one, the jumping begins.
It seems your question is a little misleading. Your button tag IS in fact set to display:inline on both normal and hover states. It sounds like the question you have is how to prevent the text below from getting bumped down on rollover. Instead of using a bottom border as you are currently, why not use the following in the hover state to achieve the underline?
text-decoration:underline;
agree with the previous answer, however if you want the flexibility of a border, being able to use padding to adjust where it lays etc, you could use
border:1px solid transparent;
not as hacky as using the same color as you bg because it doesn't matter the color of the background that way.
The input text ("ooooooo's") you can see is continuing across the complete page and under the images. I would like it to stop inside the the area shaded red. How would I resolve this?
You can give any element a fixed width using the CSS width attribute. This will work whether you're allowing input text or just displaying text.
Examples:
div{
width:400px;
background-image:url("yourimage.png");
}
textarea{
width:400px;
background-image:url("yourimage.png");
}
Your text should be inside that element. If you're having problems with long words (like your example with the ooooooooo) you can set word-wrap: break-word
Try setting overflow: hidden in your CSS. Take a look here for more info.
Use a textarea for this element. It's built-in behavior is what you are looking for. You can style it with CSS to fit your layout.
I also suggest you get the Firebug plug-in for Firefox. When you see something you like on the web, it will allow you to right-click and see the html, JavaScript, css, etc., (anything client-side) in a box at the bottom of your browser. You can even edit the code and see the results of your experiments in real time. It is invaluable for those "just like so-and-so does it" situations.
I'm trying to make a button span the width of a column.
e.g. here: http://davidnhutch.com. Notice how the light grey buttons are only as large as the text they contain? I'd like each button to span the width of that column, but can't for the life of me figure out how to do it. I've done quite a bit of looking around but am still kinda new to this.
Any ideas?
You will have to make them block elements to be able to set a width:
.button {
display: block;
width: 100%;
}
Generally, these buttons are so-called "inline element". The browser renderer has very complex algorithms of layouting these elements. It's like Typesetting but with objects on your screen instead.
CSS and HTML together influence how the algorithm works: determining the width and height, color, etc. of objects. Also their position and how text flows, or how long buttons are.
There is a limitation, however. You cannot use anything that's like a variable width for inline elements.
Adding width: 100%; display: block as others suggested makes some buttons perfect: but only when they start at the left or right of the containing box. If it's after a sentence, then it (should) display as:
<---width of container--->
Text
<----------button-------->
However, the button is not after "Text" anymore, but is put below it. This is because it's now a so-called "block element". It is like a full paragraph, instead of elements in a text line.
If this is what you want; fine and problem solved. If this is not what you want, and instead want:
<---width of container--->
Text <-------button------>
This is not possible. CCS4 would be cool if it adds inline-width: 100% or inline-height, and solve a lot of problems. However CSS4 does not exists yet.
Adding width:100% to .button seems to work for the center and right buttons at the bottom of the page.
I have a list of items that I am displaying in a floated list, with each item in the list at a fixed width so that there's two per row. What is the best practice to prevent this horrible thing from happening:
alt text http://x01.co.uk/floated_items.gif
Possibilites:
Trim to a specified number of characters before displaying the data. Requires guesswork on how many characters will be "safe".
Overflow: hidden. Hacky.
Remove the background and just have a top border on each item.
Possible but silly:
Have a scrollbar in each item by doing overflow: auto, this will look horrendous.
Add a background image to the container. It's not guaranteed that there's always an equal number of items so this option is out.
Any help on this irritating issue appreciated!
Are you using a fixed font size, i.e. specified in px? If not you also need to consider the various text size options of each browser which is probably going to make the concept of trimming the string redundant. If it is fixed then perhaps seeing how many Ws you can fit in and restricting your text to that -3 and appending an ellipsis, not sure what this list is for so that's one approach.
Personally I'd probably use overflow:hidden as that covers all eventualities and ensures that it'll always keep your layout consistent.
I guess the last option would be to keep a tight control over what can be added to the list and prevent the problem occuring in the first place. Prevention better than cure as they say, although probably unhelpfully.
There are scripts that help with this by comparing the li in blocks of two and making them both equal to the tallest.
Usually, rather than thinking what's best from a css point of view though, you should consider what presentation you want, then get the css/JavaScript to get you to your desired effect.
If this is something that you're just wanting out of the way, consider using a gradient background image that highlights the top of the li and suggests the block without actually filling it in.
Adding link to a jQuery solution: Equalize
One solution would be to have a alpha-based PNG that would slowly fade the text to the backgroundcolor of your container, on the last 10px or so. That would look good if some text are considerebly shorter than the long ones, however in the case where the text would be equal to the container it could look kinda silly.
Of course, in combination with display: hidden and white-space: no-wrap
From an accessibility point of view it's not a good idea to simply hide the title, since that could hide content on people who increase font sizes due to bad eyesight. Your design should be able to float when hit by bad resolutions or similar obstructions, even if it floats into something less pleasing to the eye.
Now if I understand your issue with the background image correctly, I believe your problem could be solved using the techniques describes in the ALA article on sliding doors, where the background image expands with the content.
Here's some controversy for you.. use a table?
Sounds like you have a grid of data to me, would a table answer this problem for you?
It also raises the question, do you actually want the items to be the same height, or just have the same amount of black background behind them? You could apply the black to the row's background, then create the centre white separator with borders and margins.
You could try using:
ul li{
display:block;
float:left;
width:6em;
height:4em;
background-color:black;
color:white;
margin-right:1em;
}
ul{
height:100%;
overflow:hidden;
}
div{
height:3em;
overflow:hidden;
background-color:blue;
}
Don't know about cross browser consistensy though.
EDIT: This is the html I'm assuming:
<div>
<ul>
<li>asdf
<li>asdf trey tyeu ereyuioquoi
<li>fdas dasf erqwt ytwere r
<li>dfsaklñd s jfañlsdjf ñkljdk ñlfas
<li>ksdflñajñldsafjñlksdjfñalksdfjlkdhfc,v.mxzn
</ul>
</div>