CSS/Javascript to force html table row on a single line

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Use the CSS property white-space: nowrap and overflow: hidden on your td.

Update

Just saw your comment, not sure what I was thinking, I’ve done this so many times I forgot how I do it. This is approach that works well in most browsers for me… rather than trying to constrain the td, I use a div inside the td that will handle the overflow instance. This has a nice side effect of being able to add your padding, margins, background colors, etc. to your div rather than trying to style the td.

<html>
<head>
<style>
.hideextra { white-space: nowrap; overflow: hidden; text-overflow:ellipsis; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<table style="width: 300px">
<tr>
    <td>Column 1</td><td>Column 2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
   <td>
    <div class="hideextra" style="width:200px">
        this is the text in column one which wraps</div></td>
   <td>
    <div class="hideextra" style="width:100px">
        this is the column two test</div></td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

As a bonus, IE will place an ellipsis in the case of an overflow using the browser-specific text-overflow:ellipsis style. There is a way to do the same in FireFox automatically too, but I have not tested it myself.

Update 2

I started using this truncation code by Justin Maxwell for several months now which works properly in FireFox too.

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