CSS Overflow Module Level 3

1. Introduction

In CSS Level 1 [CSS1], placing more content than would fit inside an element with a specified size was generally an authoring error. Doing so caused the content to extend outside the bounds of the element, which would likely cause that content to overlap with other elements.

CSS Level 2 [CSS2] introduced the overflow property, which allows authors to have overflow be handled by scrolling, which means it is no longer an authoring error. It also allows authors to specify that overflow is handled by clipping, which makes sense when the author’s intent is that the content not be shown.

This specification introduces the long-standing de-facto overflow-x and overflow-y properties, adds a clip value, and defines overflow handling more fully.

[Something something max-lines.]

Note: This specification also reproduces the definition of the text-overflow property previously defined in [CSS-UI-3], with no addition or modification, in order to present text-overflow and block-ellipsis together.

1.1. Value Definitions

This specification follows the CSS property definition conventions from [CSS2] using the value definition syntax from [CSS-VALUES-3]. Value types not defined in this specification are defined in CSS Values & Units [CSS-VALUES-3]. Combination with other CSS modules may expand the definitions of these value types.

In addition to the property-specific values listed in their definitions, all properties defined in this specification also accept the CSS-wide keywords as their property value. For readability they have not been repeated explicitly.

2. Types of Overflow

CSS uses the term overflow to describe the contents of a box that extend outside one of that box’s edges (i.e., its content edge, padding edge, border edge, or margin edge). The term might be interpreted as elements or features that cause this overflow, the non-rectangular region occupied by these features, or, more commonly, as the minimal rectangle that bounds that region. A box’s overflow is computed based on the layout and styling of the box itself and of all descendants whose containing block chain includes the box.

In most cases, overflow can be computed for any box from the bounds and properties of that box itself, plus the overflow of each of its children. However, this is not always the case; for example, when transform-style: preserve-3d [CSS3-TRANSFORMS] is used on some of the children, any of their descendants with transform-style: preserve-3d must also be examined.

There are two different types of overflow, which are used for different purposes by the UA:

• ink overflow
• scrollable overflow

2.1. Ink Overflow

The ink overflow of a box is the part of that box and its contents that creates a visual effect outside of the box’s border box. Ink overflow is the overflow of painting effects defined to not affect layout or otherwise extend the scrollable overflow area, such as box shadows, border images, text decoration, overhanging glyphs (with negative side bearings, or with ascenders/descenders extending outside the em box), outlines, etc.

Since some effects in CSS (for example, the blurs in text-shadow [CSS-TEXT-3] and box-shadow [CSS-BACKGROUNDS-3], which are theoretically infinite) do not define what visual extent they cover, the extent of the ink overflow is undefined.

The ink overflow area is the non-rectangular area occupied by the ink overflow of a box and its contents, and the ink overflow rectangle is the minimal rectangle whose axes are aligned to the box’s axes and that contains the ink overflow area. Note that the ink overflow rectangle is a rectangle in the box’s coordinate system, but might be non-rectangular in other coordinate systems due to transforms. [CSS3-TRANSFORMS]

Any overflow of replaced content is always ink overflow (as opposed to scrollable overflow).

2.2. Scrollable Overflow

The scrollable overflow of a box is the set of things extending outside of that box’s padding edge for which a scrolling mechanism needs to be provided.

The scrollable overflow area is the non-rectangular region occupied by the scrollable overflow, and the scrollable overflow rectangle is the minimal rectangle whose axes are aligned to the box’s axes and that contains the scrollable overflow area.

The scrollable overflow area is the union of:

• The scroll container’s own padding box.
• All line boxes directly contained by the scroll container.
• The border boxes of all boxes for which it is the containing block and whose border boxes are positioned not wholly outside its block-start or inline-start padding edges, accounting for transforms by projecting each box onto the plane of the element that establishes its 3D rendering context. [CSS3-TRANSFORMS]

  Is this description of handling transforms sufficiently accurate?

  Border boxes with zero area do not affect the scrollable overflow area.

• The margin areas of grid item and flex item boxes for which the box establishes a containing block.

  The UA may additionally include the margin areas of other boxes for which the box establishes a containing block; however, the conditions under which such margin areas are included is undefined in this level. This needs further testing and investigation; is therefore deferred in this draft.

• The scrollable overflow areas of all of the above boxes (including zero-area boxes and accounting for transforms as described above), provided they themselves have overflow: visible (i.e. do not themselves trap the overflow) and that scrollable overflow is not already clipped (e.g. by the clip property or the contain property).

  should overflow: clip also clip the scrollable overflow or should it remain a pure paint-time operation, which would mean that scrollable overflow, while invisible, would still be scrollable.

  Note: The mask-* properties [CSS-MASKING-1] do not affect the scrollable overflow area.

  Need to evaluate compat of honoring or ignoring clip and clip-path.

• Additional padding added to the end-side of the scrollable overflow rectangle as necessary to enable a scroll position that satisfies the requirements of place-content: end alignment.

  Note: This padding represents, within the scrollable overflow rectangle, the box’s own padding so that when its in-flow content is scrolled to the end, there is padding between the end-edge of its content and the border edge of the box. It typically ends up being exactly the same size as the box’s own padding, except in a few cases—such as when an out-of-flow element, or the visible overflow of a descendent, has already increased the size of the scrollable overflow rectangle outside the conceptual “content edge” of the scroll container’s content.

  

Note: The scrollable overflow rectangle is always a rectangle in the box’s own coordinate system, but might be non-rectangular in other coordinate systems due to transforms [CSS3-TRANSFORMS]. This means scrollbars can sometimes appear when not actually necessary.

3. Scrolling and Clipping Overflow: the overflow-x, overflow-y, and overflow properties

These properties specify whether a box’s content (including any ink overflow) is clipped to its padding edge, and if so, whether it is a scroll container that allows the user to scroll clipped parts of its scrollable overflow area into view. The visual viewport of the scroll container (through which the scrollable overflow area can be viewed) coincides with its padding box, and is called the scrollport. For convenience, a box’s nearest scrollport is the scrollport of its nearest scroll container ancestor.

The overflow-x property specifies the handling of overflow in the horizontal direction (i.e., overflow from the left and right sides of the box), and the overflow-y property specifies the handling of overflow in the vertical direction (i.e., overflow from the top and bottom sides of the box).

The overflow property is a shorthand property that sets the specified values of overflow-x and overflow-y in that order. If the second value is omitted, it is copied from the first.

Values have the following meanings:

visible

There is no special handling of overflow, that is, the box’s content is rendered outside the box if positioned there. The box is not a scroll container.

hidden

This value indicates that the box’s content is clipped to its padding box and that the UA must not provide any scrolling user interface to view the content outside the clipping region, nor allow scrolling by direct intervention of the user, such as dragging on a touch screen or using the scrolling wheel on a mouse. However, the content must still be scrollable programmatically, for example using the mechanisms defined in [CSSOM-VIEW], and the box is therefore still a scroll container.

clip

This value indicates that the box’s content is clipped to its overflow clip edge and that no scrolling user interface should be provided by the UA to view the content outside the clipping region. In addition, unlike overflow: hidden which still allows programmatic scrolling, overflow: clip forbids scrolling entirely, through any mechanism, and therefore the box is not a scroll container.

Unlike hidden, this value does not cause the element to establish a new formatting context.

Note: Authors who also want the box to establish a formatting context may use display: flow-root together with overflow: clip.

scroll

This value indicates that the content is clipped to the padding box, but can be scrolled into view (and therefore the box is a scroll container). Furthermore, if the user agent uses a scrolling mechanism that is visible on the screen (such as a scroll bar or a panner), that mechanism should be displayed whether or not any of its content is clipped. This avoids any problem with scrollbars appearing and disappearing in a dynamic environment. When the target medium is print, overflowing content may be printed; it is not defined where it may be printed.

auto

Like scroll when the box has scrollable overflow; like hidden otherwise. Thus, if the user agent uses a scrolling mechanism that is visible on the screen (such as a scroll bar or a panner), that mechanism will only be displayed if there is overflow.

The visible/clip values of overflow compute to auto/hidden (respectively) if one of overflow-x or overflow-y is neither visible nor clip.

If the computed value of overflow on a block box is neither visible nor clip nor a combination thereof, it establishes an independent formatting context for its contents.

If the computed value of the visibility property is hidden (or collapse when it has the same effect as hidden), and overflow is either scroll or auto, then:

• The user agent must not make any scrolling mechanism visible. To the extent that the scrolling mechanism that would normally be visible in the absence of visibility: hidden affects layout, it continues to do so, but is not painted.

• As would be the case with overflow: hidden, scrolling directly triggered by user interactions is disabled, but programmatic scrolling continues to take effect.

• The lack of interactive direct scrolling is enforced even if the user interacts (e.g. with a mouse scrolling wheel) with a descendent of the visibility: hidden scroll container that is itself set to visibility: visible.

Note: In the case where the scroll container (or one of its ancestors) is the target of a graphical transform, the UA might need to take this transform into account when mapping user inputs to scrolling operations. For instance, on a touch screen where the user scrolls by directly dragging the content, the transform would be expected to be taken into account to match the direction of scrolling to the gesture. On the other hand, other user inputs (such as the Page Down key, or a 1D scroll wheel) might be more naturally interpreted ignoring the transform. Choosing the appropriate behavior for each scrolling mechanism is the responsibility of the UA.

On replaced elements, the used values of all computed values other than visible is clip. Host languages should define UA style sheet rules that apply a default value of clip to such elements and set their overflow-clip-margin to content-box.

Note: Application of overflow to replaced elements was added to allow images to paint effects outside their effective layout box; the recommended UA style sheet rules are to effect their original behavior as a default. See discussion in Issue 7059 and Issue 7144. This is a change from CSS2.1 and is at-risk.

3.1. Overflow in Print and Other Static Media

Since scrolling is not possible in static media (such as print) authors should be careful to make content accessible in such media, for example by using @media print, (update: none) { … } to adjust layout such that all relevant content is simultaneously visible.

On scroll containers in non-interactive media with an overflow value of auto or scroll (but not hidden) UAs may display an indication of any scrollable overflow, such as by displaying scrollbars or an ellipsis.

Note: Not all paged media is non-interactive for example, e-book readers page content, but are interactive.

3.2. Scrollbars and Layout

When reserving space for a scrollar placed at the edge of an element’s box, the reserved space is inserted between the inner border edge and the outer padding edge. For the purpose of the background positioning area and background painting area however, this reserved space is considered to be part of the padding box.

<style>
  article {
    background: top right no-repeat url(circle.png);
    position: relative;
    overflow: auto; }
  aside { position: absolute; top: 0; right: 0; }
</style>
<article>
  <aside>×</aside>
</article>

When the box is intrinsically sized, this reserved space is added to the size of its contents. It is otherwise subtracted from space alotted to the content area. To the extent that the presence of scrollbars can affect sizing, UAs must start with the assumption that no scrollbars are needed, and recalculate sizes if it turns out they are.

...
    article { overflow: auto; max-height: 5em;  width: max-content; }
    section { margin: 2em; line-height: 1 }
...
<article>
  <section>
    This section has big margins.
  </section>
</article>

3.3. Scrolling Origin, Direction, and Restriction

The initial scroll position is the initial position of the box’s scrollable overflow area with respect to its border box, prior to any user or programmatic scrolling that changes it. The initial scroll position is dependent on the box’s writing mode, and is by default the block-start/inline-start edge of the box’s padding edge. However, the align-content and justify-content properties [CSS-ALIGN-3] can be used to change this, see CSS Box Alignment 3 § 5.3 Overflow and Scroll Positions.

Due to Web-compatibility constraints (caused by authors exploiting legacy bugs to surreptitiously hide content from visual readers but not search engines and/or speech output), UAs must clip the scrollable overflow area of scroll containers on the block-start and inline-start sides of the box (thereby behaving as if they had no scrollable overflow on that side).

The viewport uses the principal writing mode for these calculations.

3.4. Expanding Clipping Bounds: the overflow-clip-margin property

This property defines the overflow clip edge of the box, i.e. precisely how far outside its bounds the box’s content is allowed to paint before being clipped by effects (such as overflow: clip, above) that are defined to clip to the box’s overflow clip edge.

Values are defined as follows:

<visual-box>

Specifies the box edge to use as the overflow clip edge origin, i.e. when the specified offset is zero.

If omitted, defaults to padding-box on non-replaced elements, or content-box on replaced elements.

<length [0,∞]>

The specified offset dictates how much the overflow clip edge is expanded from the specified box edge Negative values are invalid. Defaults to zero if omitted.

The overflow clip edge is shaped in the corners exactly the same way as an outer box-shadow with a spread radius of the same cumulative offset from the box’s border edge. See CSS Backgrounds 3 § 4.2 Corner Shaping and CSS Backgrounds 3 § 6.1.1 Shadow Shape, Spread, and Knockout, noting in particular the formula for outsets beyond the border edge.

Note: This property has no effect on boxes with overflow: hidden or overflow: scroll, which are not defined to use the overflow clip edge.

3.5. Overflow Viewport Propagation

UAs must apply the overflow-* values set on the root element to the viewport when the root element’s display value is not none. However, when the root element is an [HTML] html element (including XML syntax for HTML) whose overflow value is visible (in both axes), and that element has as a child a body element whose display value is also not none, user agents must instead apply the overflow-* values of the first such child element to the viewport. The element from which the value is propagated must then have a used overflow value of visible.

Note: Using containment on the HTML html or body elements disables this special handling of the HTML body element. See the CSS Containment 1 § 2 Strong Containment: the contain property for details.

Note: overflow: hidden on the root element might not clip everything outside the Initial Containing Block if the ICB is smaller than the viewport, which can happen on mobile.

If visible is applied to the viewport, it must be interpreted as auto. If clip is applied to the viewport, it must be interpreted as hidden.

3.6. Flow Relative Properties: the overflow-block and overflow-inline properties

The following properties are processed according to the same processing model as the Flow-Relative box model properties defined in CSS Logical Properties 1 § 4 Flow-Relative Box Model Properties.

These properties correspond to the overflow-x and overflow-y properties. The mapping depends on the element’s writing-mode.

3.7. Smooth Scrolling: The scroll-behavior Property

The scroll-behavior property specifies the scrolling behavior for a scroll container, when scrolling happens due to navigation, scrolling APIs [CSSOM-VIEW], or scroll snapping operations not initiated by the user [CSS-SCROLL-SNAP-1]. Any other scrolls, e.g. those that are performed by the user, are not affected by this property. When this property is specified on the root element, it applies to the viewport instead.

Note: The scroll-behavior property of the HTML body element is not propagated to the viewport.

auto

The scroll container is scrolled in an instant fashion.

smooth

The scroll container is scrolled in a smooth fashion using a user-agent-defined timing function over a user-agent-defined period of time. User agents should follow platform conventions, if any.

User agents may ignore this property.

4. Reserving space for the scrollbar: the scrollbar-gutter property

The space between the inner border edge and the outer padding edge which user agents may reserve to display the scrollbar is called the scrollbar gutter.

The scrollbar-gutter property gives control to the author over the presence of scrollbar gutters separately from the ability to control the presence of scrollbars provided by the overflow property.

This property affects the presence of scrollbar gutters placed at the inline start edge or inline end edge of the box.

The presence of a scrollbar gutter at the block start edge and block end edge of the box cannot be controlled in this level, and is determined the same way as the presence of scrollbar gutters placed at the inline start edge or inline end edge of the box when scrollbar-gutter is auto.

Scrollbars which by default are placed over the content box and do not cause scrollbar gutters to be created are called overlay scrollbars. Such scrollbars are usually partially transparent, revealing the content behind them if any. Their appearance and size may vary based on whether and how the user is interacting with them.

Scrollbars which are always placed in a scrollbar gutter, consuming space when present, are called classic scrollbars. Such scrollbars are usually opaque.

Whether classic scrollbars or overlay scrollbars are used, the appearance and size of the scrollbar, and whether scrollbars appear on the start or end edge of the box, is UA defined.

Note: Which side a scrollbar appears on may depend on operating system conventions, bidirectionality, or other ergonomic considerations.

In the case of classic scrollbars, the width of the scrollbar gutter, if present (see below), is the same as the width of the scrollbar. In the case of overlay scrollbars, no scrollbar gutter is present.

Note: There are known use cases that could be addressed by enabling scrollbar gutters for overlay scrollbars, but no satisfactory design has been agreed to so far. This could be addressed by future extensions of this property. See CSS Overflow 4 §  Possible extensions for scrollbar-gutter.

The values of this property have the following meaning:

auto

Classic scrollbars consume space by creating a scrollbar gutter when overflow is scroll, or when overflow is auto and the box is overflowing. Overlay scrollbars do not consume space.

stable

The scrollbar gutter is present for classic scrollbars when overflow is hidden, scroll, or auto, regardless of whether the box is actually overflowing. Overlay scrollbars do not consume space.

Note: This does not change whether the scrollbar itself is visible, only the presence of a gutter is affected.

both-edges

If a scrollbar gutter would be present on one of the inline start edge or the inline end edge of the box, another scrollbar gutter must be present on the opposite edge as well.

When the scrollbar gutter is present but the scrollbar is not, or the scrollbar is transparent or otherwise does not fully obscure the scrollbar gutter, the background of the scrollbar gutter must be painted as an extension of the padding.

As for the overflow property, when scrollbar-gutter is set on the root element, the user agent must apply it to the viewport instead, and the used value on the root element itself is scrollbar-gutter: auto. However, unlike the overflow property, the user agent must not propagate scrollbar-gutter from the HTML body element.

5. Automatic Ellipses

5.1. Overflow Ellipsis: the text-overflow property

This property specifies rendering when inline content overflows its end line box edge in the inline progression direction of its block container element ("the block") that has overflow other than visible.

Text can overflow for example when it is prevented from wrapping (e.g. due to white-space: nowrap or a single word is too long to fit). Values have the following meanings:

clip

Clip inline content that overflows its block container element. Characters may be only partially rendered.

ellipsis

Render an ellipsis character (U+2026) to represent clipped inline content. Implementations may substitute a more language, script, or writing-mode appropriate ellipsis character, or three dots "..." if the ellipsis character is unavailable.

The term "character" is used in this property definition for better readability and means "grapheme cluster" [UAX29] for implementation purposes.

For the ellipsis value implementations must hide characters and atomic inline-level elements at the end edge of the line as necessary to fit the ellipsis, and place the ellipsis immediately adjacent to the end edge of the remaining inline content. The first character or atomic inline-level element on a line must be clipped rather than ellipsed.

div {
  font-family: monospace;
  white-space: pre;
  overflow: hidden;
  width: 9ch;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
}

ellipsing details

• Ellipsing only affects rendering and must not affect layout nor dispatching of pointer events: The UA should dispatch any pointer event on the ellipsis to the elided element, as if text-overflow had been none.
• The ellipsis is styled and baseline-aligned according to the block.
• Ellipsing occurs after relative positioning and other graphical transformations.
• If there is insufficient space for the ellipsis, then clip the rendering of the ellipsis itself (on the same side that neutral characters on the line would have otherwise been clipped with the text-overflow:clip value).

user interaction with ellipsis

• When the user is interacting with content (e.g. editing, selecting, scrolling), the user agent may treat text-overflow: ellipsis as text-overflow: clip.
• Selecting the ellipsis should select the ellipsed text. If all of the ellipsed text is selected, UAs should show selection of the ellipsis. Behavior of partially-selected ellipsed text is up to the UA.

div {
  font-family:Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height:1.1;
  width:3.1em; padding:.2em; border:solid .1em black; margin:1em 0;
}

<div>
CSS IS AWESOME, YES
</div>

<div style="text-overflow:clip; overflow:hidden">
CSS IS AWESOME, YES
</div>

<div style="text-overflow:ellipsis; overflow:hidden">
CSS IS AWESOME, YES
</div>

<div style="text-overflow:ellipsis; overflow:hidden">
NESTED
 <p>PARAGRAPH</p>
WON’T ELLIPSE.
</div>

Note: the side of the line that the ellipsis is placed depends on the direction of the block. E.g. an overflow hidden right-to-left (direction: rtl) block clips inline content on the left side, thus would place a text-overflow ellipsis on the left to represent that clipped content.

ellipsis interaction with scrolling interfaces

This section applies to elements with text-overflow other than text-overflow:clip (non-clip text-overflow) and overflow:scroll.

When an element with non-clip text-overflow has overflow of scroll in the inline progression dimension of the text, and the browser provides a mechanism for scrolling (e.g. a scrollbar on the element, or a touch interface to swipe-scroll, etc.), there are additional implementation details that provide a better user experience:

When an element is scrolled (e.g. by the user, DOM manipulation), more of the element’s content is shown. The value of text-overflow should not affect whether more of the element’s content is shown or not. If a non-clip text-overflow is set, then as more content is scrolled into view, implementations should show whatever additional content fits, only truncating content which would otherwise be clipped (or is necessary to make room for the ellipsis/string), until the element is scrolled far enough to display the edge of the content at which point that content should be displayed rather than an ellipsis/string.

div.crawlbar {
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
  height: 2em;
  overflow: scroll;
  white-space: nowrap;
  width: 15em;
  border:1em solid black;
}

<div class="crawlbar">
CSS is awesome, especially when you can scroll
to see extra text instead of just
having it overlap other text by default.
</div>

While the content is being scrolled, implementations may adjust their rendering of ellipses (e.g. align to the box edge rather than line edge).

5.2. Indicating Block-Axis Overflow: the block-ellipsis property

This property allows inserting content into the last line box before a (forced or unforced) region break to indicate the continuity of truncated/interrupted content. It only affects line boxes contained directly by the block container itself, but as it inherits, will have an effect on descendants’ line boxes unless overridden. If the box contains no line box immediately preceding a region break, then this property has no effect.

Note: See § 6 Fragmenting Overflow for a way to generate boxes with such a region break.

Should this apply to other types of fragmentation breaks (e.g. pages, columns)?

The inserted content is called the block overflow ellipsis. Values have the following meanings:

none

The rendering is unaffected.

auto

Render an ellipsis character (U+2026)—or a more typographically-appropriate equivalent—as the block overflow ellipsis at the end of the affected line box. UAs should use the conventions of the content language, writing system, and writing mode to determine the most appropriate ellipsis string.

<string>

Render the specified string as the block overflow ellipsis at the end of the affected line box. The UA may truncate this string if it is absurdly long.

When block-ellipsis is not none, the block overflow ellipsis string is wrapped in an anonymous inline and placed at the end of the line box as a direct child of the block container’s root inline box, reducing the space in the line box available to the other contents of the line. This inline is assigned unicode-bidi: plaintext and line-height: 0 and is placed in the line box after the last soft wrap opportunity (see [CSS-TEXT-3]) that would still allow the entire block overflow ellipsis to fit on the line. For this purpose, soft wrap opportunities added by overflow-wrap are ignored. If this results in the entire contents of the line box being displaced, the line box is considered to contain a strut, as defined in CSS 2 § 10.8.1 Leading and half-leading. Text alignment and justification occurs after placement, and measures the inserted block overflow ellipsis together with the rest of the line’s content.

Note: Setting the block overflow ellipsis's line-height to 0 makes sure that inserting it cannot cause the line’s height to grow, which could cause further relayouts and potentially cycles. This is almost equivalent to inserting the block overflow ellipsis as a paint-time operation, except that it still participates in alignment and justification. The downside is that unusually tall / deep glyphs in the block overflow ellipsis may overflow.

The block overflow ellipsis must not be included in either the ::first-letter nor the ::first-line pseudo-elements.

If there is a subsequent fragmentation container in the fragmentation context that would receive subsequent content, then the content displaced by the block overflow ellipsis must be pushed to that fragmentation container.

The UA must treat the block overflow ellipsis as an unbreakable string, If any part of the block overflow ellipsis overflows, it is treated as scrollable overflow, and its rendering is affected by the text-overflow property.

The block overflow ellipsis does not capture events: pointer events are dispatched to whatever is underneath it.

It also has no effect on the intrinsic size of the box: its min-content and max-content sizes are calculated exactly as if block-ellipsis were none.

Note: Future specifications may extend this feature, for example by providing an ::ellipsis pseudo-element to style the text, or by allowing the selection of a child element of the block to use as either an inline-level or block-level indicator (in which case, it can capture events).

6. Fragmenting Overflow

6.1. Limiting Visible Lines: the line-clamp shorthand property

The line-clamp property is a shorthand for the max-lines, block-ellipsis, and continue properties.

For the time being, experimental implementations are encouraged to follow the full behavior defined by this shorthand and its longhands, but to only expose the shorthand to authors. This is in order to facilitate further tweaking, and in particular potential renaming, of the longhand properties and their values.

It allows limiting the contents of a block container to the specified number of lines; remaining content is fragmented away and neither rendered nor measured. Optionally, it also allows inserting content into the last line box to indicate the continuity of truncated/interrupted content.

The values have the following meaning:

none

Sets max-lines to none, continue to auto, and block-ellipsis to none.

<integer>

Sets max-lines to the specified <integer>, continue to discard, and the block-ellipsis property to second component of the value or to auto if omitted.

See the corresponding longhand properties for details about how this mechanism operates.

li {
  line-clamp: 5 "… (continued on next page)";
}
strong {
  display: block;
  text-transform: uppercase;
}

<li><a href="cheese-is-milk">
  <strong>Cheese is Actually Made of Milk!</strong>
  Investigative reporters at the World Wide Web Press Corps
  have discovered the secret of cheese.
  Tracing through byzantine layers of bureaucracy and shadow corporations,
  our crack team of journalists have traced the source of camembert.
</a></li>

+---------------------------------------+
| CHEESE IS ACTUALLY MADE OF MILK!      |
| Investigative reporters at the World  |
| Wide Web Press Corps have discovered  |
| the secret of cheese. Tracing through |
| byzantine…  (continued on next page)  |
+---------------------------------------+

6.1.1. Legacy compatibility

For compatibility with legacy content, UAs that support line-clamp must also support the -webkit-line-clamp property and the additional -webkit-discard value for the continue property.

Like line-clamp, -webkit-line-clamp is a shorthand of max-lines, continue, and block-ellipsis, except that:

• its syntax is none | <integer>

• it sets continue to -webkit-discard instead of discard

• it unconditionally sets block-ellipsis to auto

Additionally, for children (including anonymous children) of boxes whose display property computes to -webkit-box or -webkit-inline-box, the used values of the max-lines, continue, and block-ellipsis properties are taken from the computed values of the parent box; the computed values of these properties on the box itself are ignored.

The -webkit-discard value behaves identically to discard, except that it only takes effect if the computed value of the display property on the parent is -webkit-box or -webkit-inline-box and the computed value of the -webkit-box-orient property on the parent is vertical.

Note: Implementations of the legacy -webkit-line-clamp property have not behaved identically to what is specified here. The historical behavior is quirky and less robust, as documented for example in this blog post. The current design learns from the mistakes of that early experiment, and is intended to be sufficiently compatible with existing content that implementations can eventually be changed to follow to the specified behavior. If further adjustments are found to be necessary, they will be incorporated to this specification. In the meanwhile, authors should be aware that there may be discrepancies.

6.2. Forcing a Break After a Set Number of Lines: the max-lines property

This property has no effect on boxes that are not fragmentation containers that capture region breaks.

Otherwise, if the value of max-lines is not none, a region break is forced after its Nth descendant in-flow line box, where N is the specified value of max-lines. Only lines boxes in the same Block Formatting Context are counted: the contents of descendants that establish independent formatting contexts are skipped over while counting line boxes.

If fewer than N line boxes exist, then max-lines introduces no region break.

<div id=a>
  a: line 1<br>
  a: line 2<br>
  <div id=b>
    b: line 1<br>
    b: line 2<br>
    b: line 3<br>
    b: line 4<br>
  </div>
  a: line 3<br>
  a: line 4<br>
</div>

a: line 1
a: line 2
b: line 1
b: line 2…
a: line 3…

a: line 1
a: line 2
b: line 1…

Note: This implies that max-lines has no effect when applied to multi-column containers, since any line box they contain are nested into independent formatting contexts.

Only positive integers are accepted. Zero or negative integers are invalid and must cause the declaration to be ignored.

Note: The widows, orphans, and break-inside properties do not affect the position of the forced region break introduced by the max-lines property.

6.3. Fragmentation of Overflow: the continue property

The continue property gives authors the ability to turn a box into a fragmentation container (see [CSS-BREAK-3]) and to specify that content after the fragmentation break must be discarded.

This property is meant to generalize and replace the region-fragment property from [CSS-REGIONS-1]. Once it is sufficiently stable in this specification, region-fragment should be removed from the regions specification in favor of this.

auto

If the box has more content than can fit, the excess content is handled according to the usual rules.

discard

The box becomes a fragmentation container that captures region breaks, if it is not already. [CSS-BREAK-3] Content after the first region break is not rendered (see below). (If the box is a multi-column container, any overflow columns are also not rendered.)

Note: This region break might be forced (e.g. imposed by max-lines or by another mechanism, such as the break-before/break-after properties) or unforced (e.g. if the content would otherwise overflow this fragmentation container due to its size constraints). Breaks applying to other fragmentation contexts (such as pagination of this box itself) do not cause any content to be discarded.

Note: This property does not cause the box to establish an independent formatting context.

Given an article with one excessively long overflowing line, and four more lines than can fit in the fragmentation direction as in the illustration bellow, different renderings are possible based on the combination of the overflow and continue property.

	continue: discard	continue: auto
overflow: visible
overflow: hidden

Content that is “not rendered” due to continue: discard is discarded, similar to display: none:

• It is not rendered.

• It is also not made available for speech rendering.

• It does not allow user interaction.

• Make sure effects on OM are well defined [Issue #2970]

• What about positioned elements whose static position is in the discarded content are not rendered? See also discussions in the Sydney F2F meeting. [Issue #2971]

However, since intrinsic sizes are calculated across fragmentation containers, this content is taken into account for the purpose of finding the box’s min-content and max-content inline sizes (see CSS Fragmentation 3 § 5.1 Breaking into Varying-size Fragmentainers). Min-content and max-content block sizes are calculated based on the content from the start of the fragmented flow to the first forced break if any, or to the end of the fragmented flow if there is no forced break.

Note: In the case of parallel fragmentation flows, content occurring after the fragmentation break in the box tree could still be rendered, if it is laid out above the position representing the end of this fragmentation container.

Appendix A. Privacy and Security Considerations

This specification introduces no new privacy or security concerns.

Appendix B. Changes

This appendix is informative.

Changes from the 2021-12-02 Working Draft

• Require end-edge padding to be included in the scrollable overflow area of block containers; this was previously optional for block containers with normal content distribution, pending Web-compatibility investigations. (Issue 129)

• Extended overflow to apply to replaced elements. (Issue 7144)

• More precisely define the interaction of -webkit-line-clamp and the various line-clamp longhands. See § 6.1.1 Legacy compatibility. (Issue 6842)

• Clarified that region breaks are what trigger discarding of subsequent content for continue: discard (and that other types of breaks do not); and gave examples of what triggers a region break on such a box.

• Minor clarifications:

  • Annotate <length-percentage> value definitions using CSS bracketed range notation.

Changes from the 2020-06-03 Working Draft

• Moved the scroll-behavior property from [CSSOM-VIEW] to this specification.

• Adopted the scrollbar-gutter property, previously defined in [CSS-OVERFLOW-4].

• Added box-edge keywords to overflow-clip-margin. (Issue 5801)

• Clarified interaction of border-radius and overflow-clip-margin.

• Added note about user scrolling gestures vs. transforms.

• Tightened up requirements around incorporating margins, padding, and zero-area boxes into the scrollable overflow area. (Issue 129, Issue 4791)

• More precisely defined impact of scrollbars on layout. (Issue 3348)

• Handle various edge cases involving overflow propagation to the viewport. (Issue 3779, Issue 5913)

• Miscellaneous small clarifications and fixes.

Changes from the 2018-07-31 Working Draft

• Fixed markup errors and typos

• Made various editorial clarifications and fixed inconsistencies

• Renamed block-overflow to block-ellipsis

• Define text-overflow to affect an overflowing block overflow ellipsis

• Define the behavior of a block overflow ellipsis that is longer than the line

• Define interaction of block-ellipsis and ::first-line / ::first-letter

• Adjust the intrinsic size of elements with continue: discard

• Define how to layout the block overflow ellipsis

• Define the legacy behavior of -webkit-line-clamp for compatibility with existing content

• Define that end padding is included in the scrollable overflow area except for block containers (which are more tricky to handle, due to web-compat issues)

• Define that Margins of flex and grid items are included in scrollable overflow

• Do not propagate overflow from boxless elements

• Rename 'scrollable overflow region' to 'scrollable overflow area'

• Introduce the overflow-clip-margin property

Changes Prior to the 2018-07-31 Working Draft

Changes predating the publication of the 2018-07-31 Working Draft can be found in the following change logs:

• from 2017-08-02 to 2018-07-31

• from 2015-01-27 to 2017-08-01

• from 2013-03-28 to 2015-01-27

• from 2012-07-31 to 2013-03-27

Acknowledgments

Thanks especially to the feedback from Rossen Atanassov, Bert Bos, Tantek Çelik, John Daggett, Daniel Glazman, Vincent Hardy, Håkon Wium Lie, Peter Linss, Robert O’Callahan, Florian Rivoal, Alan Stearns, Steve Zilles, and all the rest of the www-style community.