Calculating text width

Solution 1:

This worked better for me:

$.fn.textWidth = function(){
  var html_org = $(this).html();
  var html_calc = '<span>' + html_org + '</span>';
  $(this).html(html_calc);
  var width = $(this).find('span:first').width();
  $(this).html(html_org);
  return width;
};

Solution 2:

Here's a function that's better than others posted because

1. it's shorter
2. it works when passing an <input>, <span>, or "string".
3. it's faster for frequent uses because it reuses an existing DOM element.

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/philfreo/MqM76/

// Calculate width of text from DOM element or string. By Phil Freo <http://philfreo.com>
$.fn.textWidth = function(text, font) {
    if (!$.fn.textWidth.fakeEl) $.fn.textWidth.fakeEl = $('<span>').hide().appendTo(document.body);
    $.fn.textWidth.fakeEl.text(text || this.val() || this.text()).css('font', font || this.css('font'));
    return $.fn.textWidth.fakeEl.width();
};

Solution 3:

My solution

$.fn.textWidth = function(){
    var self = $(this),
        children = self.children(),
        calculator = $('<span style="display: inline-block;" />'),
        width;

    children.wrap(calculator);
    width = children.parent().width(); // parent = the calculator wrapper
    children.unwrap();
    return width;
};

Basically an improvement over Rune's, that doesn't use .html so lightly