I'm writing an extension to an existing XUL-application, conkeror. In that, In
some part of the user-interface of I'm writing, I'm creating HTML elements with
a fixed-width, `<span>`s in this case, to display various results.

Within those `span`s there's text some text, which, on occasion, is too long to
fit its fixed-with container. I'd like to cut-off the parts that are too long,
and end it with an ellipsis instead.

Those `span`s currently have the following CSS attributes:

```
display: inline-block;
width: 30%;
overflow: hidden;
white-space: nowrap;

```

In addition to that, I'd like to use `text-overflow: ellipsis;`, but it turns
out the Gecko platform doesn't implement that yet. However, for plain HTML pages
with regular style-sheets, there happens to be a workaround for Firefox and
other Gecko-based products, that makes cutting off overlong text and putting an
ellipsis at its end work anyway.

The details of that technique are described
[here](http://mattsnider.com/css/css-string-truncation-with-ellipsis/). It's
using Gecko's ability to run XUL code to do its magic.

So I've tried to use that in my XUL application as well. I've changed my
style-sheet to include the described
`-moz-binding: url('ellipsis.xml#ellipsis');`, and also created the
`elipsis.xml` file as described.

However, doing this (or similar things using different URLs, e.g. chrome:// or
absolute file:// URLs) seems to have no effect whatsoever within my
application. In fact, it doesn't even try to access the `ellipsis.xml` file at
all, according to strace.

Obviously XUL is able to do what I want, so I'm assuming I'm doing something
wrong, or am simply missing out on some detail I have to take care of first in
order to get the desired results.

What I'm looking for is a way to pull the regular `text-overflow: ellipsis;`
track within a XUL application or, alternatively, a way to get the same result
without the aforementioned technique.