title: Length of a string in pixels
body: <p>I'm populating a dropDownList with arrayCollection of strings. I want the width of the drop down list control to match with the size (in pixels) of the longest string in the array collection. The problem I'm facing is: the font width of the strings in the collection are different e.g. 'W' looks wider than 'l'. So I estimated the width of a character to be 8 pixels but that's not pretty neat. If a string that has many 'W' and 'M' is encountered the estimation is wrong. So I want precise pixel width of strings. How can i get the exact length of a string in pixels??</p>
  
  <p>My solution that estimates all character to be 8 pixels wide is given below:</p>
  
  <pre><code>public function populateDropDownList():void{
      var array:Array = new Array("o","two","three four five six seven eight wwww");
      var sampleArrayCollection:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection(array);
      var customDropDownList:DropDownList = new DropDownList();
      customDropDownList.dataProvider=sampleArrayCollection;
      customDropDownList.prompt="Select ...";
      customDropDownList.labelField="Answer Options:";
      //calculating the max width
      var componentWidth=10; //default
      for each(var answerText in array){
       Alert.show("Txt size: "+ answerText.length + " pixels: " + answerText.length*9); 
       if(answerText.length * 8 &gt; componentWidth){
        componentWidth=answerText.length * 8;
       }
      }
      customDropDownList.width=componentWidth;
      answers.addChild(customDropDownList);
     }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Any idea or solution is highly valued.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>