[thelist] wrapping long content on web pages

[aardvark]

so simon posted this url earlier:
http://www.cw360.com/bin/bladerunner?REQUNIQ=1028301500&R
EQSESS=x82XZIXR0&REQHOST=site1&2131REQEVENT=&CART
I=114657&CCAT=1&CCHAN=4&CFLAV=1

what a great example of a crappy url... now imagine someone
pastes that into a comment field on a site, like evolt.org... there are
many pages where a member pasted a url into the comment box,
and it's one of these urls, causing the whole page to splay across
the screen like a marshmallow in a microwave...

now imaging a similar scenario where a user of your cms decides
that the little alert box on the right side of the page should have
really long words in it -- even though you've warned them against
this...

sure, the design can stretch to handle it, but sometimes it just
gets overwhelming...

i'm trying to find a valid, semantically correct, and pleasantly
simple way to cause words/urls to wrap in a browser...

the <wbr> element is not valid html, and while it's support doesn't
quite suck, i feel it's against the spirit of the game...

i tried a *major* hack by stuffing non-breaking spaces and hyphens
into <span>s given a display:none property, and then gingerly
inserting those into obscenely long urls on pages -- to no avail...

there's really no good way to programmatically read the syllables of
a word, guess the user's viewable content area, and then start
stuffing hyphens into words...

so i'm down to two options:
- make the design able to handle it (which i do now)
- start inserting overflow properties into special-case containers
where size is important...

i'm curious to know if anyone else has come across any solutions,
played around, or just found clients and pulled all the keys off their
keyboard (or gone to sites with urls like above and just deleted
their cms from hell)...

i know i'm not alone here...


--
Read the evolt.org case study
Usability: The Site Speaks for Itself
http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904151035/evoltorg02-20
ISBN: 1904151035