Author Topic: Simple Request? Auto-truncate Label Text and Insert Ellipses?  (Read 4814 times)

memetic arts

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Hi -

I'd originally posted this question in the PlayMaker forum in the context of Custom Actions, but it was rightly suggested that I post a request over here, as it actually is more of a native feature enhancement.

I know you can truncate Text Labels by setting Max Lines to 1 and setting a Max Width of N pixels.  However, from a Usability/User Experience perspective, it may not always be obvious that a word or words have been truncated.  The best practice for handling truncation is to replace the truncated section with a clear indicator, such as ellipses.

Is there any way that this feature could be included in a future update?  It's probably easy enough to achieve this through script -- I've done it in JavaScript/HTML contexts (and now via CSS3!), but would be ideal if it were just "handled" natively.

Thanks in advance for your consideration . . .
« Last Edit: May 13, 2013, 06:26:16 PM by memetic arts »

ArenMook

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Re: Simple Request? Auto-truncate Label Text and Insert Ellipses?
« Reply #1 on: May 14, 2013, 02:19:27 AM »
I advise using the "shrink to fit" option instead.

memetic arts

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Re: Simple Request? Auto-truncate Label Text and Insert Ellipses?
« Reply #2 on: May 14, 2013, 06:26:48 AM »
From a visual design point of view that won't work - think about the screen title area in iOS apps - Apple actually has guidelines about what that needs to look like.  Also, in terms of visual consistency, it's just not a good practice to do what effectively is a change of font size to accommodate longer phrases.

From a usability standpoint, this is also a bad idea.  Think about titles displayed in a grid (like in a music album / track listing).  If you shrink it down to fit a fixed width, the words could become unreadable.

I'll handle it with script.

Thanks for the reply.