Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 08/06/07 21:29

Scripsit Ben C:

>> So I would rather the url be forcefully wrapped to the next line
>> rather than breaking my display.
- -
> The only way to do it is to put a zero-width space between each
> character (​).

The zero-width space character should not be expected to work consistently
across browsing situations. In particular, it may well result in the display
of a symbol for an unrepresentable character, if a browser does not
recognize the special meaning of the character and does not even find a
glyph for it in the available fonts.

Note that there is no requirement in HTML specifications that the zero-width
space be processed in any particular way, except that it be treated as a
whitespace character. The rules of HTML do not require conformance to the
Unicode Standard, or its line breaking rules in particular. It's more or
less the general idea that the zero-width space should be treated as
allowing a line break, but this is not a requirement.

Using <wbr> is safer, despite being "nonstandard". It works in a great
majority of browsing situations, and it causes no harm (it is simply
ignored) when it does not work.

Note that URLs should not be broken arbitrarily across line but only at some
reasonable breaking points, like after a "/". So <wbr> should be inserted at
selected positions only.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

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