Adjust the text input width appropriately for the cloze exercise

My JavaScript-generated fill-in-the-blank text is causing me trouble when it comes to adjusting the size of the input boxes.

Unlike others, I know exactly what the user will or should be entering.

If there is a blank space like this _______________, I want the input to be precisely 4 characters wide. However, due to the use of a proportional font (which won't change), the width always ends up being too large, even for wide characters like capital Ds.

So, any suggestions? I've tried setting the width using size, CSS width in em (resulting in it being too big) and ex (making it too narrow even for smaller characters).

I could calculate the width of the actual word that needs to be filled in using a hidden span element, but that doesn't seem very elegant.

Is there a way to make the browser come up with a more accurate estimate for the width of the input when using a proportional font?

htmlcsstextbox

Answer №1

Choosing the Right Font

After experimenting with different font types, I have found that using a monospaced font yields the best results:

<input type="text" size="4" style="font-family:monospace" />

If you'd like to see an example of this in action, check out the following demonstration: http://jsbin.com/epagi/edit. This will render correctly in most modern browsers.

For those who prefer variable-width fonts, there is a workaround available. While it may not be elegant, setting the text-transform property to uppercase can provide a rough estimate of the width of the text input. By adding a specific classname like sizeMe-4, and then utilizing jQuery to dynamically adjust the width based on the expected number of characters, we can achieve a similar result.

To view a live demo of this solution, visit: http://jsbin.com/epagi/2/edit

For easy reference, here is the code snippet required for implementing this functionality:

<input type="text" name="pin" maxlength="4" class="sizeMe-4" 
       style="text-transform:uppercase" />

--

String.prototype.repeat = function(num) {
    return new Array( num + 1 ).join( this );
}

$(function(){
  $(":input[class^='sizeMe']").each(function(){
    var size = Number($(this).attr("class").split("-").pop());
    var newW = $("<span>").text( "X".repeat(size) ).appendTo("body");
    $(this).width( $(newW).width() );
    $(newW).remove();
  });
});​

Answer №2

Mootools Innovations

If you happen to come across this, I wanted to share a technique using Mootools where I created a span with placeholder text and utilized specialized methods from Mootools More library (ensuring invisibility for a cloze task).

$('gapsize').measure(function(){return this.getComputedSize()});

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