Physical Width of Text

Hey guys, I was just wondering, what method (if any) do you use to gauge the length of a dynamic text field?

To give an example, say I had a category object and when you roll your mouse over it, a bar extends the length of the category name. To set the width of this bar, I've taken the average length of a character of text at the font size (about 5-7px) and multiplied it by the total number of characters. Sadly, I don't know how to account for an abundance of extra wide or thin letters and sometimes, the bar comes up short or overshoots the letters.

Does anyone happen to have a better way to do this?

Hey guys, I was just wondering, what method (if any) do you use to gauge the length of a dynamic text field?

To give an example, say I had a category object and when you roll your mouse over it, a bar extends the length of the category name. To set the width of this bar, I've taken the average length of a character of text at the font size (about 5-7px) and multiplied it by the total number of characters. Sadly, I don't know how to account for an abundance of extra wide or thin letters and sometimes, the bar comes up short or overshoots the letters.

Does anyone happen to have a better way to do this?

you can try using em and ex units instead of px, is more acurrate but still remain a problem to keep proportion as you if you must mix with px. :)

best regards

I've never tried using em increments in Actionscript. How would you go about doing that?

I've never tried using em increments in Actionscript. How would you go about doing that?

sorry, I see now that is "Flash and ActionScript" section, I thought is HTML and CSS.

best regards

Well, thanks for answering anyways.