hiding text using “text-indent”

Question

I'm trying to hide some text inside an <li> element using CSS by setting text-indent: -999px;.
For some reason this doesn't work when I set the direction of the document to "rtl" (right to left - my site is in Hebrew).
When direction is "rtl" the text still shows...
Anyone knows why, and a way around this?

Answer 1

I found the best way is to make the text a transparent color:

color: rgba(0,0,0,0);

Note: This bug still exists in firefox 12 (text-indent value is ignored on rtl)

Answer 2

My problem was with text-align. In case you modify align mode of the element or parent element(s) wrapping it to left, you must give a negative index for text-indent. Otherwise you must give a positive value.

.case1{text-indent:-999px;text-align:left;overflow:hidden;display:block}

Otherwise

.case2{text-indent:999px;text-align:right;overflow:hidden;display:block}

Answer 3

I prefer this solution:

.hide_text { text-indent: 100%; white-space: nowrap; overflow: hidden; }

Answer 4

Along with text-indent: -9999px try using display: block;. It solved for me.

Additionally, if you need the li elements to float horizontally (e.g. a horizontal menu), use float: left;.

Answer 5

What about setting direction:ltr on the elements you're trying to give negative text-indent?

Demo: jsfiddle.net/Marcel/aJBnN/1/

Answer 6

text-align: right; works for me