The fact that it stops resizing at some point is a feature. However, it's supposed to put dots in the middle so you can see the beginning and end of the title, and that's not happening in your screenshot.

Reproduced this by typing "llanfairpwll" into the search box on English Wikipedia.

Thank you very much.

If you fix this, it would be fantastic if you could also allow the sysadmin to configure the maximum allowable width, whether through a $wg... configuration variable or a hook. Some wikis (like ours) are willing to accept a very wide dropdown as we have many long titles.

SimpleSearch

Whoops, accidentally submitted the form too early.

Still happens, verified on en.wikipedia using Opera 12.10. Looks like the autoellipsis feature assumes there is slightly more space than there actually is.

I think this is because the autoellipsis is calculated before the bolding (to the part you actually typed) is applied.

Change 111180 had a related patch set uploaded by Bartosz Dziewoński:
jquery.suggestions, mediawiki.searchSuggest: Don't use jquery.autoEllipsis

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/111180

Change 111180 merged by jenkins-bot:
jquery.suggestions, mediawiki.searchSuggest: Don't use jquery.autoEllipsis

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/111180

This should no longer happen after the patch above is deployed.