Truncating long words with javascript - need help adjusting code

programming web dev
1

At the moment I’m using the following code to truncate words that are over 15 characters long, and add ‘…’ onto the end to show the word has been truncated - im using this on part of a forum where users post the words so I have no control over the length of the word but need to make sure the layout of the page doesnt mess up.

Placed inbetween head tags


<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
var mxw_max = 5;
function mxw(id)
{
  if (!document.getElementById) return;
  var n = document.getElementById(id);
  if (!n || !n.nodeType) return;
  mxw2(n);
}
function mxw2(n)
{
  if (n.nodeType == 3 /*Node.TEXT_NODE*/)
  {
	var flag = 0;
	  var words = n.data.split(" ");
	for (var i = 0; i < words.length; i++)
	{
	  if (words*.length > mxw_max)
	  {
		flag++;
		words* = words*.substr(0, mxw_max-2) + "... "; 
	  }
	}
	if (flag > 0) n.data = words.join(" ");
  }
  var children = n.childNodes;
  for (var i = 0; i < children.length; i++) mxw2(children*); 
}
//-->
</script>

Then on the page I use the following around the user posted text to truncate the word.


<div id="shorten">Userpostedtextishere</div><script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">mxw("shorten");</script>

So ‘Userpostedtextishere’ would become ‘Userpostedtex…’

The problem is that I can only use this on one part of the page - unless i give different ID’s to all the divs on every part of the page where I need to use it.

How can I get this to work so I can use the same div and script around the words on every part of the page?

(BTW: Im know nothing much about javascript as I’m just a html person - so please dont just tell me the changes to the header code I must make as I probably wont understand)

All help will be appreciated a lot!

Thanks,