Can you ellipsize the placeholder of a textarea in one CSS selector?

My apologies for the confusion in my previous response. I misunderstood the question.

To directly ellipsize the placeholder of a <textarea> element using a single CSS selector, you can use the ::placeholder pseudo-element and the text-overflow: ellipsis property. While this approach doesn't fully work in all browsers, you can use a trick with a combination of direction: rtl and white-space: nowrap to achieve the desired effect in most modern browsers.

Here's how you can do it:

cssCopy code
textarea::placeholder {
  direction: rtl; /* Reverse text direction */
  white-space: nowrap; /* Prevent text wrapping */
  overflow: hidden; /* Hide any overflow text */
  text-overflow: ellipsis; /* Show ellipsis for overflow text */
}

By reversing the text direction with direction: rtl, the placeholder text will overflow from the left side, and the text-overflow: ellipsis will display the ellipsis at the beginning of the placeholder. This trick effectively truncates the placeholder text with an ellipsis at the end.

Keep in mind that this approach is not perfect and may not work as expected in all browsers, especially older versions. The effectiveness of the ellipsis may vary depending on the browser's support for text-overflow and direction. As of my knowledge cutoff in September 2021, this method works in most modern browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge, but it may not work in older versions of Internet Explorer.

If cross-browser support is a concern, you may need to resort to JavaScript-based solutions, as described in my previous response, to ensure consistent behavior across different browsers.