CSS Style Sheet Language: The Overflow and Data Loss

The main purpose of introducing CSS was to make content readable. It is used to describe a document that is written in XML or HTML because it is a style sheet language. The bold and large headings, the space between each paragraph, all of this is controlled by the stylesheet if the browser.

Data loss is CSS is caused by some property of overflow. The data loss can be described as the combination of hidden overflow and more quantity of content for a container of smaller size. However, the data loss os not only caused by the overflow, but it can also be caused by the alignment as well. 

I will be telling you about the ways you can come across overflow, and the ways to prevent it. 

What is Overflow?

Looking back a few years, a simple floated layout of boxes was very difficult to achieve. For this floated nature, the boxes used to have no connection with their neighboring boxes. This meant that the boxes could not know about the next box, whether they are taller or shorter. Hence, this made it impossible to match their heights. 

Often, in trying to line up the boxes, the designer would end up restricting the box heights. They based the height of the box on a guess about the amount of they would hold. This was not very simple, and if the content would be more for the box to hold, the content would start poking out of the box. This is called overflow. 

This overflow causes the design of the site to break. The overflowing of content made many of the developers ask ways to prevent this from happening. One of the easiest ways to hide the non-aligned nature of the boxes was to use designs like the fading away design of the boxes. You can also avoid using the borders for the boxes and the background colors. In addition, you can also use faux, a technique to create a column that looks like it has a full-height. 

These problems gave rise to a new style sheet language called the CSS. This new layout made the boxes to stretch to the same height. The CSS grid made us enable to set the size but to increase in length if it is neede to. 

Inline Overflow

The chance of overflow occurs when you have set the size for the things. If the text exceeds the width or the height of the box, then CSS will let the text continue outside the box. And this results in overflow. By setting the size for the box, the CSS is understanding that you need the box to be of that particular size or the box will not fit in the layout.

This is a very important problem which is faced by us in these modern methods of the layout. If you are planning that your box has the perfect inline size and that it will fit be aligned with the other boxes of a grid which is float-based, then the best option to go for is the Flexbox layout. 

The floated layout makes you set the size for each of the boxes beforehand. And, you have no chance of knowing what amount of space your content is going to take. Then, you have to fit a large content within a smaller box and you will be left with more space for a small amount of content in a bigger box. 

But, these problems disappear with the use of Flexbox. It ensures that the contents are assigned boxes appropriate to their sizes. This solves the problem of overflow.  

Keeping Away From Data Loss

The “visible” property of the default value for the “overflow” makes the overflow happen. This overflow can be managed in other ways, like the using of “overflow: scroll” or “overflow: auto”. Using this will provide your boxes with scrollbars. 

You can also use “overflow: hidden” to crop the overflow. You may think that the better default would have been the hiding of the overflow, rather than showing it. But this choice is made by CSS because it wants to show its core value for the design. 

The overflow in CSS means that the parts of your content which remain out of the box will get lost. Moreover, there is no way you can retrieve it back. This will be a great problem in some cases. The sudden vanishing of contents may result in problems like the disappearing of the button of your form, this will not let the users finish the filling of the form. In case of terms and conditions, the missing of some of the parts will not let the users know about the whole thing.

This can be very difficult for the developers to spot, especially, if it happens on certain display sizes. Hence, it becomes important to show the overflowing of data so that the developers can fix the problems.  

CSS Overflow Y

The property of the CSS overflow y is to decide whether to add a scroll bar, clip a content, or make the content overflow to display when it is overflowing at the bottom or the top of the page. This makes CSS overflow y very important for the CSS style sheet language.

CSS Overflow Ellipsis

The CSS overflow ellipsis decides how to warn the users about the overflow of the content. Text-overflow-mode of the CSS controls how the warning will be shown to the user. Hence CSS overflow ellipsis is a very important part of the CSS. 

Alignment And Data Loss

The improved alignment properties which have developed over the years also offer some chances of data loss. Take the example of flex items in a column which are located at the edge of the box and having various sizes. If you go for “flex-start”, then all the words will stay to the right of the box. And when you will do “center”, this will make the sentence to align to the center, but the longer sentences will always go outside the box. Hence, alignment can also lead to data loss.

To prevent this loss of data, the CSS uses some keywords, which are used with the properties of the alignment. These keywords are used in the Specification for the Box Alignment. The keywords cancel all the layout process along with the Flexbox and Grid. Firefox is the only place that supports it. For example, if you specify the align to be “align-item: safe center”, this will make the sentences to align to the starting of the box rather than the center. 

Conclusion

So, these are the ways you can overcome the effect of the overflow of data in the CSS style sheet language. You should check your website for overflow. This can be very harmful as it does not give the whole information to the users which you are intending to offer them. CSS Overflow Y and CSS Overflow Ellipsis are the two things that can help you with this process.