sad cow

web design, jQuery plugins, web tools and general stuff about the internet by matt squirrell.
not exactly unique but hopefully better...

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jQuery Best Length

Take a look at the carousel menu at the top of the page and you'll notice that although each object is the same height, they are all different widths. The more content they contain, the wider they are.

This is backward to how things normally work, as the width is usually predefined and the height of the element is generated by the browser. This isn't much good when you need something to stay the same height, like a speech bubble, say.

This little plugin throws your content into your element and keeps making it wider until the content fits into the height you specified.

It's easy to use, just set up your element in html:
<div class="resizeme">Hi! I am quite a lot of content! I need to be 40px high!</div>
and include the following javascript:
$(".resizeme").bestlength({'height' : 50});

That's all there is to it!

There are a couple of options regarding accuracy, and one to centre the text vertically (although this can bugger up styling, so use with caution - padding is a better idea).

Here is a very grey demo.

Using PHP for custom-font titles
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I am Matt Squirrell.

And this is the sort of thing I do.

I can design and build rich, feature-filled websites like this one. Ask me nicely and I might even do it with less than 700KB of images.

I started this website because I'm constantly coming up with neat little fixes, chunks of code, plugins or tricks, and then forgetting about them in a week. This is as much for me as it is for you (but it certainly is nice to share bits and pieces with other people).

It will also serve as a central point for all the other things I have done that have found their way to the Internet - from strange MMO God-sims to a 'Choose your own adventure' maker.

You are more than welcome to hire me if you've got your own web project you want to do - if you can think it I can pretty much make it. I'm cheaper than paying someone from the bargain basement to do it and then having to pay someone good to fix all the problems, too!

Anyway, until I think of a better way to sign off, I only hope you found something useful up there above ground.

Click on the cow ;o)

Contact me. If you like.

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