Position of whitespace while using text-overflow: ellipsis;

Question

I have a top bar for a mobile website which looks like this:

The user can open a personal menu by clicking his/her name. When the name of the person is very long (blue bar) I want to shorten it using text-overflow: ellipsis.

I got that to work (looks like the blue bar) but now if I have a short name the arrow icon is shown on the right (red bar). I want to keep the arrow next to the name and the remaining whitespace on the right of the arrow, as in the green bar.

I don't want to set a width or max-width to any of the elements (except maybe the button) because I want it to work on different mobile devices, therefore the available width is unknown.

Is there any way to achieve this with just HTML and CSS? What I have done so far:

HTML

<button>Log off</button>
<div id="menu">
    <span id="icon">+</span>
    <span id="name">John Withthelonglastname</span>
</div>

CSS

#name {
  display: block;
  overflow: hidden;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
  white-space: nowrap;
}

#icon { float:right;}
button { float: right;}

Fiddle here: http://jsfiddle.net/webwolfe/L07t0zk7/

Answer 1

You can easily achieve this with HTML and CSS by using Flex:

.menu {
  width: 200px;
  padding: 2px;
  color: white;
  display: flex;
}
.blue {
  background: blue;
}
.red {
  background: red;
}
.name {
  overflow: hidden;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
  white-space: nowrap;
}
.icon {
  padding-left: 5px;
  padding-right: 5px;
  flex: 1 1 auto;
}
button {
  min-width: 70px;
}

<div class="menu blue">
  <span class="name">John Withthelonglastname</span>
  <span class="icon">+</span>
  <button>Log off</button>
</div>

<br>


<div class="menu red">
  <span class="name">John Doe </span>
  <span class="icon">+</span> 
  <button>Log off</button>
</div>

Take note of FlexyBoxes as a fiddler to play with its settings.

P.S: it is better to use classes instead of IDs for general purpose elements

Answer 2

You and use content to add in the icon after the name.

#name {
    display: block;
    overflow: hidden;
    text-overflow: ellipsis;
    white-space: nowrap;
}
#name:after{
    content: ' +';
    position: absolute;
}

Answer 3

You could use a sweet :before pseudoSelector instead of icon span:

#name:before
{
content:'+';
z-index:999;
display:inline-block;
float:right
}

fiddle