title: jQuery - Get Width of Element when Not Visible (Display: None)
body: <p>It seems like in jQuery when an element is not visible width() returns 0.  Makes sense, but I need to get the width of a table in order to set the width of the parent before I show the parent.</p>
  
  <p>As noted below, there is text in the parent, that makes the parent skew and look nasty.  I want the parent to be only as wide as the table and have the text wrap.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;div id="parent"&gt;
      Text here ... Can get very long and skew the parent
      &lt;table&gt; ... &lt;/table&gt;
      Text here too ... which is why I want to shrink the parent based on the table
  &lt;/div&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>CSS:</p>
  
  <pre><code>#parent
  {
      display: none;
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Javascript:</p>
  
  <pre><code>var tableWidth = $('#parent').children('table').outerWidth();
  if (tableWidth &gt; $('#parent').width())
  {
      $('#parent').width(tableWidth);
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>tableWidth always returns 0 since it is not visible (is my guess since it gives me a number when visible).  Is there a way to get the width of the table without making the parent visible?</p>