Wrapping title attribute

Question

Firefox does not wrap words in a title attribute:

<a title="longword"></a>

Is there a way to do word-wrapping in that case? I tried with:

<a title="longword" style="word-wrap:break-word;"></a>

but it does not work.

Chrome, instead, automatically wraps.

Answer 1

Use escaped n, example:

<input type="text" title="first line \n second line"></input>

Answer 2

No, you cannot make Firefox deviate from its way of rendering title attribute values; cf. to How can I use a carriage return in a HTML tooltip?

The tooltips created by using title attributes are of questionable usability (tiny font that cannot be easily increased by the user; disapperance after some seconds; etc.), so they are suitable (at most) for short advisory titles (mainly for links), which not cause a need for wrapping.

For longer tooltips, consider using CSS techniques. Or just put the tip into the text proper.

Answer 3

For what it's worth, the only part of the HTML5 specifications that deals with line breaks in title attributes states:

If the title attribute's value contains U+000A LINE FEED (LF) characters, the content is split into multiple lines. Each U+000A LINE FEED (LF) character represents a line break.

So you could break up the title attribute on the server-side, although this is unlikely to be a desirable solution. Alternatively, you can try inserting zero width spaces, though browser support for this may also be inconsistent.