How do I indicate long text into a smaller fixed column with CSS?

You can do this with CSS alone:

.box {
    -o-text-overflow: ellipsis;   /* Opera */
    text-overflow:    ellipsis;   /* IE, Safari (WebKit) */
    overflow:hidden;              /* don't show excess chars */
    white-space:nowrap;           /* force single line */
    width: 300px;                 /* fixed width */
}

Note: You will want to check on the latest browser support.