title: jQuery width() returns 0 for a span element created on the fly?
body: <p>I'm trying to determine the width of a string. I'm using the following code but it always return 0. It seems to be that as the span element is created and not already present in the page body, jQuery width() returns 0. Is there a way such that I can get the width of the text without resorting to creating dummy html code in the page?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks :)</p>
  
  <pre><code>$('&lt;span&gt;test&lt;/span&gt;').width(); // width = 0
  $('span.width').width(); // returns a width value
  
  &lt;body&gt;&lt;span class="width"&gt;test&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/body&gt;
  </code></pre>