change proportions of 3 columned display: table / table-cell - html

Question

I have this simple setup:
.container {
display: table;
width: 70%;
text-align: center;
}
div {
border: 1px solid #336;
}
.column {
display: table-cell;
}
<div class="container">
<div class="column">Column 1.</div>
<div class="column">Column 2 is a bit longer.</div>
<div class="column">Column 3.</div>
</div>
jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/aqk1yy1d/
This table-cell behavior expands with window resize. I would like the center cell/div to be fixed to its content and not expand. Basically the sides should expand but not the inner cell, wich should be the size of its content.
I don't see how I can do this without setting a defined width somewhere, but that in not ok, because I will have different length of content in that middle cell....
Any pointers?

Answer 1

The trick is to set both the left and right column to take up 50% of the width of the table. The center column gets a width of 1px. If there is content larger than 1px in the center column it will force the center column to grow.
The first example only has text inside it, which will wrap at the first moment. To mitigate this add something like white-space: nowrap to keep all text on a single line or make sure that you have content with a width.
.container {
display: table;
width: 70%;
text-align: center;
margin-bottom: 10px;
}
div {
border: 1px solid #336;
}
.column {
display: table-cell;
}
.left,
.right {
width: 50%;
}
.center {
width: 1px;
}
.center-content {
white-space: nowrap;
}
<div class="container">
<div class="column left">Column 1.</div>
<div class="column center">Column 2 is a bit longer.</div>
<div class="column right">Column 3.</div>
</div>
<div class="container">
<div class="column left">Column 1.</div>
<div class="column center"><div class="center-content">Column 2 is a bit longer.</div></div>
<div class="column right">Column 3.</div>
</div>

Answer 2

If you can't find a better solution, you could try using javascript to set the width dynamically. Change your html to something like this:
<div class="container">
<div class="column">Column 1.</div>
<div id="column2Outer" class="column">
<div id="column2Inner" style="display: inline-block">Column 2 is a bit longer.</div>
</div>
<div class="column">Column 3.</div>
</div>
The javascript would be as follows:
$("#column2Outer").css("width", document.getElementById("column2Inner").clientWidth);
You would call this on $(document).ready() or whenever the content changes. You would of course also have to remove the border from the inner column so you can't tell it's a nested div