truncate.js

a jQuery plugin for deep-HTML truncation and toggling

Why use JavaScript to truncate text?

1. Server-side text truncation based on character counts is always incorrect. The width of the character string "iiiii" is approximately 58% less than the width of "MMMMM" unless a monospace font is used.
2. The CSS3 property "text-overflow" can only truncate a single line of text, and is not supported by IE7 and below.

Features

1. HTML truncation to a specified number of lines, including HTML that wraps around other floated elements.
2. Deep-HTML truncation with preservation of all non-type3 (text) nodes
3. Optional specification of a truncation suffix, e.g. …
4. Toggling between truncated and un-truncated states with configurable hyperlink text
5. Triggered events when the truncated state of the HTML is changed
6. O(log n) execution time for n := text length
7. Pre-truncation and re-truncation analyses are both performed on cloned elements to minimize DOM flicker
8. Optional console logging of execution time and number of steps for performance analysis
9. Ability to merge modifications to truncated HTML back into the original HTML