jquery-minPossibleWidths

A very simple jquery plugin to set the th widths of a table to the smallest possible width without causing the text to line break.

Installation

Include script after the jQuery library (unless you are packaging scripts somehow else):

<script src="/path/to/jquery.minpossiblewidths.js"></script>

Possible Improvements

• Don't prototype string.width since that reaches beyond the scope of the plugin.
• Don't loop through jQuery(this).find(x).each so much and refactor for cleanliness

Usage

Options

{
    maxRowCount: int,
    minPossibleWidth: int,
    incrementAllBy: int,
    minWidths: {
        some_th_id : int
    }
}

• maxRowCount - You can specify the max number of rows to iterate through before stopping measuring column widths
• minPossibleWidth - A global minimum that the found minimum cannot be below.
• minWidths - Specify a minimum that any column (via id) cannot be below.
• incrementAllBy - Add this number to every calculated width. Very helpful if you have a negative dropshadow that might be making the calculation just a hair off.

Any column with a th that has a class of autoWidth will not have the width set. However it will still be iterated over for width determination.

Additionally, any td that has a class of skipWidth or that has a colspan will be skipped when calculating the widths for that column.

Example

Set the max row count:

$('#myCoolTable').minPossibleWidths({
    maxRowCount : 20,
})

Set a minimum width for a specific column that the found width cannot be less than:

$('#myCoolTable').minPossibleWidths({
    minWidths : {
        titleCol : 150
    }
})