Calculating the width of plain text in a table cell.

jek

Hi!

I have a table consisting of 1 row and 6 cols. The 6 cols each have one text link inside, and I need to make the 6 links distributed evenly in the table...

To be able to do this I have come to the conclusion that I need to calculate the width of each of the links and subtract the total of that from the total width of the table so I can insert a 'blank' column between all the links...

So now I need a way to calculate the with of the links...

(There must be an easier way to do this...)

Thanks in advance / jek

craigh

since font widths vary from font to font and browser to browser and users can set their own using CSS (among other settings) in the local browser, I think you are out of luck.

How about makeing the table a certain width (like 600px) and then making each cell a standard width (like 100px)?

Mordecai

Well, assuming that craigh is incorrect (which he's not) and that every person happened to have the exact same settings as you, this is how you could go about doing such a thing:
Save the link text (what's between the <a> and the </a>) to a string, and then, using the GD library, use imagettfbbox() to calculate how much space the text takes up:
$size = imagettfbbox("12",0,"fonts/arial.ttf",$linktext);
$width = abs($size[4]-$size[0]);

Then, do it all again... 6 times. 🙂

Norman_Graham

Originally posted by jek
Hi!

I have a table consisting of 1 row and 6 cols. The 6 cols each have one text link inside, and I need to make the 6 links distributed evenly in the table...

Eh??? Just centre each of the links in its cell, and then they'll be 'even'. Or what do you mean by "distributed evenly"? How about a code example?

Btw - this is what HTML famously wasn't designed for. Listen to Craigh.

Norman

PS: If your link signifiers don't fit evenly in a cell, consider editing them so that they do.

jek

Thanks for your response guys, but I have decided to leave the links as they are... Thanks anyway!