How to hide Table Row Overflow?

Need to specify two attributes, table-layout:fixed on table and white-space:nowrap; on the cells. You also need to move the overflow:hidden; to the cells too

table { width:250px;table-layout:fixed; }
table tr { height:1em;  }
td { overflow:hidden;white-space:nowrap;  } 

Here's a Demo . Tested in Firefox 3.5.3 and IE 7

In general, if you are using white-space: nowrap; it is probably because you know which columns are going to contain content which wraps (or stretches the cell). For those columns, I generally wrap the cell's contents in a span with a specific class attribute and apply a specific width.

Example:

HTML:

<td><span class="description">My really long description</span></td>

CSS:

span.description {
    display: inline-block;
    overflow: hidden;
    white-space: nowrap;
    width: 150px;
}

In most modern browsers, you can now specify:

<table>
 <colgroup>
  <col width="100px" />
  <col width="200px" />
  <col width="145px" />
 </colgroup>
 <thead>
  <tr>
   <th>My 100px header</th>
   <th>My 200px header</th>
   <th>My 145px header</th>
  </tr>
 </thead>
 <tbody>
  <td>100px is all you get - anything more hides due to overflow.</td>
  <td>200px is all you get - anything more hides due to overflow.</td>
  <td>100px is all you get - anything more hides due to overflow.</td>
 </tbody>
</table>

Then if you apply the styles from the posts above, as follows:

table {
    table-layout: fixed; /* This enforces the "col" widths. */
}
table th, table td {
    overflow: hidden;
    white-space: nowrap;
}

The result gives you nicely hidden overflow throughout the table. Works in latest Chrome, Safari, Firefox and IE. I haven't tested in IE prior to 9 - but my guess is that it will work back as far as 7, and you might even get lucky enough to see 5.5 or 6 support. ;)

Only downside (it seems), is that the table cell widths are identical. Any way to get around this? – Josh Stodola Oct 12 at 15:53

Just define width of the table and width for each table cell

something like

table {border-collapse:collapse; table-layout:fixed; width:900px;}
th {background: yellow; }
td {overflow:hidden;white-space:nowrap; }
.cells1{width:300px;}
.cells2{width:500px;}
.cells3{width:200px;}

It works like a charm :o)