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get and set height of element [duplicate]

How do you get the rendered height of an element?
Let's say you have a <div> element with some content inside. This content inside is going to stretch the height of the <div>. How do you get the "rendered" height when you haven't explicitly set the height. Obviously, I tried:
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').style.height;
Is there a trick for doing this? I am using jQuery if that helps.

Try one of:
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').clientHeight;
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').offsetHeight;
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').scrollHeight;
clientHeight includes the height and vertical padding.
offsetHeight includes the height, vertical padding, and vertical borders.
scrollHeight includes the height of the contained document (would be greater than just height in case of scrolling), vertical padding, and vertical borders.

It should just be
$('#someDiv').height();
with jQuery. This retrieves the height of the first item in the wrapped set as a number.
Trying to use
.style.height
only works if you have set the property in the first place. Not very useful!

NON JQUERY since there were a bunch of links using elem.style.height in the top of these answers...
INNER HEIGHT:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element.clientHeight
document.getElementById(id_attribute_value).clientHeight;
OUTER HEIGHT:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/HTMLElement.offsetHeight
document.getElementById(id_attribute_value).offsetHeight;
Or one of my favorite references: http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/

I use this to get the height of an element (returns float):
document.getElementById('someDiv').getBoundingClientRect().height
It also works when you use the virtual DOM. I use it in Vue like this:
this.$refs['some-ref'].getBoundingClientRect().height
For a Vue component:
this.$refs['some-ref'].$el.getBoundingClientRect().height

You can use .outerHeight() for this purpose.
It will give you full rendered height of the element. Also, you don't need to set any css-height of the element. For precaution you can keep its height auto so it can be rendered as per content's height.
//if you need height of div excluding margin/padding/border
$('#someDiv').height();
//if you need height of div with padding but without border + margin
$('#someDiv').innerHeight();
// if you need height of div including padding and border
$('#someDiv').outerHeight();
//and at last for including border + margin + padding, can use
$('#someDiv').outerHeight(true);
For a clear view of these function you can go for jQuery's site or a detailed post here.
it will clear the difference between .height() / innerHeight() / outerHeight()

style = window.getComputedStyle(your_element);
then simply: style.height

Definitely use
$('#someDiv').height() // to read it
or
$('#someDiv').height(newHeight) // to set it
I'm posting this as an additional answer because theres a couple important things I just learnt.
I almost fell into the trap just now of using offsetHeight. This is what happened :
I used the good old trick of using a debugger to 'watch' what properties my element has
I saw which one has a value around the value I was expecting
It was offsetHeight - so I used that.
Then i realized it didnt work with a hidden DIV
I tried hiding after calculating maxHeight but that looked clumsy - got in a mess.
I did a search - discovered jQuery.height() - and used it
found out height() works even on hidden elements
just for fun I checked the jQuery implementation of height/width
Here's just a portion of it :
Math.max(
Math.max(document.body["scroll" + name], document.documentElement["scroll" + name]),
Math.max(document.body["offset" + name], document.documentElement["offset" + name])
)
Yup it looks at BOTH scroll and offset. If that fails it looks even further, taking into account browser and css compatibility issues. In other words STUFF I DONT CARE ABOUT - or want to.
But I dont have to. Thanks jQuery!
Moral of the story : if jQuery has a method for something its probably for a good reason, likely related to compatibilty.
If you haven't read through the jQuery list of methods recently I suggest you take a look.

I think the best way to do this in 2020 is to use vanilla js and getBoundingClientRect().height;
Here's an example
let div = document.querySelector('div');
let divHeight = div.getBoundingClientRect().height;
console.log(`Div Height: ${divHeight}`);
<div>
How high am I? 🥴
</div>
On top of getting height this way, we also have access to a bunch of other stuff about the div.
let div = document.querySelector('div');
let divInfo = div.getBoundingClientRect();
console.log(divInfo);
<div>What else am I? 🥴</div>

I made a simple code that doesn't even need JQuery and probably gonna help some people.
It gets the total height of 'ID1' after loaded and use it on 'ID2'
function anyName(){
var varname=document.getElementById('ID1').offsetHeight;
document.getElementById('ID2').style.height=varname+'px';
}
Then just set the body to load it
<body onload='anyName()'>

document.querySelector('.project_list_div').offsetHeight;

Hm we can get the Element geometry...
var geometry;
geometry={};
var element=document.getElementById(#ibims);
var rect = element.getBoundingClientRect();
this.geometry.top=rect.top;
this.geometry.right=rect.right;
this.geometry.bottom=rect.bottom;
this.geometry.left=rect.left;
this.geometry.height=this.geometry.bottom-this.geometry.top;
this.geometry.width=this.geometry.right-this.geometry.left;
console.log(this.geometry);
How about this plain JS ?

So is this the answer?
"If you need to calculate something but not show it, set the element to visibility:hidden and position:absolute, add it to the DOM tree, get the offsetHeight, and remove it. (That's what the prototype library does behind the lines last time I checked)."
I have the same problem on a number of elements. There is no jQuery or Prototype to be used on the site but I'm all in favor of borrowing the technique if it works. As an example of some things that failed to work, followed by what did, I have the following code:
// Layout Height Get
function fnElementHeightMaxGet(DoScroll, DoBase, elementPassed, elementHeightDefault)
{
var DoOffset = true;
if (!elementPassed) { return 0; }
if (!elementPassed.style) { return 0; }
var thisHeight = 0;
var heightBase = parseInt(elementPassed.style.height);
var heightOffset = parseInt(elementPassed.offsetHeight);
var heightScroll = parseInt(elementPassed.scrollHeight);
var heightClient = parseInt(elementPassed.clientHeight);
var heightNode = 0;
var heightRects = 0;
//
if (DoBase) {
if (heightBase > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightBase; }
}
if (DoOffset) {
if (heightOffset > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightOffset; }
}
if (DoScroll) {
if (heightScroll > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightScroll; }
}
//
if (thisHeight == 0) { thisHeight = heightClient; }
//
if (thisHeight == 0) {
// Dom Add:
// all else failed so use the protype approach...
var elBodyTempContainer = document.getElementById('BodyTempContainer');
elBodyTempContainer.appendChild(elementPassed);
heightNode = elBodyTempContainer.childNodes[0].offsetHeight;
elBodyTempContainer.removeChild(elementPassed);
if (heightNode > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightNode; }
//
// Bounding Rect:
// Or this approach...
var clientRects = elementPassed.getClientRects();
heightRects = clientRects.height;
if (heightRects > thisHeight) { thisHeight = heightRects; }
}
//
// Default height not appropriate here
// if (thisHeight == 0) { thisHeight = elementHeightDefault; }
if (thisHeight > 3000) {
// ERROR
thisHeight = 3000;
}
return thisHeight;
}
which basically tries anything and everything only to get a zero result. ClientHeight with no affect. With the problem elements I typically get NaN in the Base and zero in the Offset and Scroll heights. I then tried the Add DOM solution and clientRects to see if it works here.
29 Jun 2011,
I did indeed update the code to try both adding to DOM and clientHeight with better results than I expected.
1) clientHeight was also 0.
2) Dom actually gave me a height which was great.
3) ClientRects returns a result almost identical to the DOM technique.
Because the elements added are fluid in nature, when they are added to an otherwise empty DOM Temp element they are rendered according to the width of that container. This get weird, because that is 30px shorter than it eventually ends up.
I added a few snapshots to illustrate how the height is calculated differently.
The height differences are obvious. I could certainly add absolute positioning and hidden but I am sure that will have no effect. I continued to be convinced this would not work!
(I digress further) The height comes out (renders) lower than the true rendered height. This could be addressed by setting the width of the DOM Temp element to match the existing parent and could be done fairly accurately in theory. I also do not know what would result from removing them and adding them back into their existing location. As they arrived through an innerHTML technique I will be looking using this different approach.
* HOWEVER * None of that was necessary. In fact it worked as advertised and returned the correct height!!!
When I was able to get the menus visible again amazingly DOM had returned the correct height per the fluid layout at the top of the page (279px). The above code also uses getClientRects which return 280px.
This is illustrated in the following snapshot (taken from Chrome once working.)
Now I have noooooo idea why that prototype trick works, but it seems to. Alternatively, getClientRects also works.
I suspect the cause of all this trouble with these particular elements was the use of innerHTML instead of appendChild, but that is pure speculation at this point.

offsetHeight, usually.
If you need to calculate something but not show it, set the element to visibility:hidden and position:absolute, add it to the DOM tree, get the offsetHeight, and remove it. (That's what the prototype library does behind the scenes last time I checked).

Sometimes offsetHeight will return zero because the element you've created has not been rendered in the Dom yet. I wrote this function for such circumstances:
function getHeight(element)
{
var e = element.cloneNode(true);
e.style.visibility = "hidden";
document.body.appendChild(e);
var height = e.offsetHeight + 0;
document.body.removeChild(e);
e.style.visibility = "visible";
return height;
}

If you are using jQuery already, your best bet is .outerHeight() or .height(), as has been stated.
Without jQuery, you can check the box-sizing in use and add up various paddings + borders + clientHeight, or you can use getComputedStyle:
var h = getComputedStyle(document.getElementById('someDiv')).height;
h will now be a string like a "53.825px".
And I can't find the reference, but I think I heard getComputedStyle() can be expensive, so it's probably not something you want to call on each window.onscroll event (but then, neither is jQuery's height()).

With MooTools:
$('someDiv').getSize().y

If i understood your question correctly, then maybe something like this would help:
function testDistance(node1, node2) {
/* get top position of node 1 */
let n1Pos = node1.offsetTop;
/* get height of node 1 */
let n1Height = node1.clientHeight;
/* get top position of node 2 */
let n2Pos = node2.offsetTop;
/* get height of node 2 */
let n2Height = node2.clientHeight;
/* add height of both nodes */
let heightTogether = n1Height + n2Height;
/* calculate distance from top of node 1 to bottom of node 2 */
let actualDistance = (n2Pos + n2Height) - n1Pos;
/* if the distance between top of node 1 and bottom of node 2
is bigger than their heights combined, than there is something between them */
if (actualDistance > heightTogether) {
/* do something here if they are not together */
console.log('they are not together');
} else {
/* do something here if they are together */
console.log('together');
}
}

Have you set the height in the css specifically? If you haven't you need to use offsetHeight; rather than height
var h = document.getElementById('someDiv').style.offsetHeight;

Getting the computed width of an element after modification

I have a routine that sizes elements in a page to fit snugly within their parent. In most cases, it is working admirably, but in Firefox (JUST Firefox - Chrome, IE, etc are fine) it is fumbling on the first attempt in one particular instance - a div nested within a fieldset fails to resize on the first attempt, but succeeds on the second (and subsequent) attempts.
Each element is sized relative to its parent using the following:
function resizeChild(elem) {
// Get gutter based on margins, borders, padding, etc
var gutter = getGutter(elem); // returns obj with x and y properties
var parent = elem.parentElement;
var parentStyles = window.computedStyle(parent);
var targetWidth = (parseInt(parentStyles['width']) - gutter.x;
var widthPx = targetWidth + 'px';
// prototype.js setStyle shortcut
elem.setStyle({
width: widthPx,
maxWidth: widthPx,
minWidth: widthPx
});
}
I run this in a loop, iterating over every element with a particular CSS class.
According to the Firefox debugger, the outer element (the fieldset) is always being resized before the inner div. I can inspect the element, and see the style attributes being set appropriately. However, on the next iteration of the loop, when the parent is being evaluated (I can see in the javascript property inspector that the parent is indeed the fieldset), the value for width that is returned for the computed style is the previous, unmodified value, thus the inner div is resized incorrectly.
Can somebody shed some light on this please?
Edits after comments:
parent.clientWidth returns 0.
Not sure if this is relevant, but a parent div of the fieldset had display set to none shortly prior the resize operation being called. However, at the point at which the fieldset was resized, the display of the div was set to inline-block. I don't think this would make a difference, but then I'm not well educated on some of the particular behaviours of Firefox in this scenario.

I found a solution to this, although it's a little situational.
It seems that if the width of the parent element has been dynamically modified using prototype.js#Element.setStyle() (and, for all I know, other libraries that directly modify the style attribute), then the computedStyle() method won't reflect the change until all changes have completed.
The solution was to check to see if the parent element of the element being resized also had the CSS class that flagged the elements for resize, and if it did, get the size from the style attribute instead of using computedStyle(). Here's the full function, with modifications:
function resizeFullwidth() {
$$('*.fullWidth').each(function(elem, i) {
// Get gutter based on margins, borders, padding, etc
var gutter = getGutter(elem); // returns obj with x and y properties
var parent = elem.parentElement;
var parentStyles = (
parent.hasClassName('fullWidth')
? window.computedStyle(parent)
: parent.style);
var targetWidth = (parseInt(parentStyles['width']) - gutter.x;
var widthPx = targetWidth + 'px';
// prototype.js setStyle shortcut
elem.setStyle({
width: widthPx,
maxWidth: widthPx,
minWidth: widthPx
});
});
}
This now works correctly in all browsers :)
Thanks very much for your help, people :)

Have you tried var targetWidth = parent.clientWidth ?
See : MDN Element.clientWidth

Javascript function to find total page height

I'm after a simple javascript function that will detect the total height of my web page which is dynamic and apply it to the height of a div which is the page background. Would it be possible to implement it?
The div is called bg...
Any ideas? Thanks in advance

Try:
var height = body.offsetHeight ? body.offsetHeight : html.offsetHeight;
document.getElementById ('divID').style.height = height + 'px';
Here an useful documentation:
http://www.quirksmode.org/dom/w3c_cssom.html

Im using currently following code to do that:
var getBodyHeight = function () {
var d = document,
bd = d.body,
dd = d.documentElement,
max = Math.max(
bd.scrollHeight,
bd.offsetHeight,
bd.clientHeight,
dd.offsetHeight,
dd.scrollHeight,
dd.clientHeight
);
return max;
};

This is what I use to figure out the height of content in iFrame for the purpose of adjusting it properly.
var body = document.body,
html = document.documentElement,
height = 0;
height = body.offsetHeight;
if(height === 0){
height = html.offsetHeight;
}
The reason for checking the body first is that the height of html is actually the height of the iFrame, which could be bigger than the content itself. However, in certain cases such as when body has no height, then it falls back to use height of html instead.
For your case, you might want to experiment with a similar scheme. I'm not sure why you have to use a div to set background so I can't really suggest a better alternative (if any).
Solution based on the comment below:
What you can do is the following. Have a div inside the main container with position absolute, width/height 100% and z-index -1. Then it will always be the correct size no matter how large the contain grow or shrink. With this approach, you will have to make sure that container always has size. This is a pure CSS solution, which might be simpler than using Javascript to adjust.

var height = screen.height;
var width = screen.width;
var resolution = width+"x"+height;
alert(resolution);
it gives the resolution of the screen.i know you want page height and width but it will help you later in web development. i am using it as most important part for my web!

jQuery: Get height of hidden element in jQuery

I need to get height of an element that is within a div that is hidden. Right now I show the div, get the height, and hide the parent div. This seems a bit silly. Is there a better way?
I'm using jQuery 1.4.2:
$select.show();
optionHeight = $firstOption.height(); //we can only get height if its visible
$select.hide();

You could do something like this, a bit hacky though, forget position if it's already absolute:
var previousCss = $("#myDiv").attr("style");
$("#myDiv").css({
position: 'absolute', // Optional if #myDiv is already absolute
visibility: 'hidden',
display: 'block'
});
optionHeight = $("#myDiv").height();
$("#myDiv").attr("style", previousCss ? previousCss : "");

I ran into the same problem with getting hidden element width, so I wrote this plugin call jQuery Actual to fix it. Instead of using
$('#some-element').height();
use
$('#some-element').actual('height');
will give you the right value for hidden element or element has a hidden parent.
Full documentation please see here. There is also a demo include in the page.
Hope this help :)

You are confuising two CSS styles, the display style and the visibility style.
If the element is hidden by setting the visibility css style, then you should be able to get the height regardless of whether or not the element is visible or not as the element still takes space on the page.
If the element is hidden by changing the display css style to "none", then the element doesn't take space on the page, and you will have to give it a display style which will cause the element to render in some space, at which point, you can get the height.

I've actually resorted to a bit of trickery to deal with this at times. I developed a jQuery scrollbar widget where I encountered the problem that I don't know ahead of time if the scrollable content is a part of a hidden piece of markup or not. Here's what I did:
// try to grab the height of the elem
if (this.element.height() > 0) {
var scroller_height = this.element.height();
var scroller_width = this.element.width();
// if height is zero, then we're dealing with a hidden element
} else {
var copied_elem = this.element.clone()
.attr("id", false)
.css({visibility:"hidden", display:"block",
position:"absolute"});
$("body").append(copied_elem);
var scroller_height = copied_elem.height();
var scroller_width = copied_elem.width();
copied_elem.remove();
}
This works for the most part, but there's an obvious problem that can potentially come up. If the content you are cloning is styled with CSS that includes references to parent markup in their rules, the cloned content will not contain the appropriate styling, and will likely have slightly different measurements. To get around this, you can make sure that the markup you are cloning has CSS rules applied to it that do not include references to parent markup.
Also, this didn't come up for me with my scroller widget, but to get the appropriate height of the cloned element, you'll need to set the width to the same width of the parent element. In my case, a CSS width was always applied to the actual element, so I didn't have to worry about this, however, if the element doesn't have a width applied to it, you may need to do some kind of recursive traversal of the element's DOM ancestry to find the appropriate parent element's width.

Building further on user Nick's answer and user hitautodestruct's plugin on JSBin, I've created a similar jQuery plugin which retrieves both width and height and returns an object containing these values.
It can be found here:
http://jsbin.com/ikogez/3/
Update
I've completely redesigned this tiny little plugin as it turned out that the previous version (mentioned above) wasn't really usable in real life environments where a lot of DOM manipulation was happening.
This is working perfectly:
/**
* getSize plugin
* This plugin can be used to get the width and height from hidden elements in the DOM.
* It can be used on a jQuery element and will retun an object containing the width
* and height of that element.
*
* Discussed at StackOverflow:
* http://stackoverflow.com/a/8839261/1146033
*
* #author Robin van Baalen <robin#neverwoods.com>
* #version 1.1
*
* CHANGELOG
* 1.0 - Initial release
* 1.1 - Completely revamped internal logic to be compatible with javascript-intense environments
*
* #return {object} The returned object is a native javascript object
* (not jQuery, and therefore not chainable!!) that
* contains the width and height of the given element.
*/
$.fn.getSize = function() {
var $wrap = $("<div />").appendTo($("body"));
$wrap.css({
"position": "absolute !important",
"visibility": "hidden !important",
"display": "block !important"
});
$clone = $(this).clone().appendTo($wrap);
sizes = {
"width": $clone.width(),
"height": $clone.height()
};
$wrap.remove();
return sizes;
};

Building further on Nick's answer:
$("#myDiv").css({'position':'absolute','visibility':'hidden', 'display':'block'});
optionHeight = $("#myDiv").height();
$("#myDiv").css({'position':'static','visibility':'visible', 'display':'none'});
I found it's better to do this:
$("#myDiv").css({'position':'absolute','visibility':'hidden', 'display':'block'});
optionHeight = $("#myDiv").height();
$("#myDiv").removeAttr('style');
Setting CSS attributes will insert them inline, which will overwrite any other attributes you have in your CSS file. By removing the style attribute on the HTML element, everything is back to normal and still hidden, since it was hidden in the first place.

You could also position the hidden div off the screen with a negative margin rather than using display:none, much like a the text indent image replacement technique.
eg.
position:absolute;
left: -2000px;
top: 0;
This way the height() is still available.

I try to find working function for hidden element but I realize that CSS is much complex than everyone think. There are a lot of new layout techniques in CSS3 that might not work for all previous answers like flexible box, grid, column or even element inside complex parent element.
flexibox example
I think the only sustainable & simple solution is real-time rendering. At that time, browser should give you that correct element size.
Sadly, JavaScript does not provide any direct event to notify when element is showed or hidden. However, I create some function based on DOM Attribute Modified API that will execute callback function when visibility of element is changed.
$('[selector]').onVisibleChanged(function(e, isVisible)
{
var realWidth = $('[selector]').width();
var realHeight = $('[selector]').height();
// render or adjust something
});
For more information, Please visit at my project GitHub.
https://github.com/Soul-Master/visible.event.js
demo: http://jsbin.com/ETiGIre/7

Following Nick Craver's solution, setting the element's visibility allows it to get accurate dimensions. I've used this solution very very often. However, having to reset the styles manually, I've come to find this cumbersome, given that modifying the element's initial positioning/display in my css through development, I often forget to update the related javascript code. The following code doesn't reset the styles per say, but removes the inline styles added by javascript:
$("#myDiv")
.css({
position: 'absolute',
visibility: 'hidden',
display: 'block'
});
optionHeight = $("#myDiv").height();
optionWidth = $("#myDiv").width();
$("#myDiv").attr('style', '');
The only assumption here is that there can't be other inline styles or else they will be removed aswell. The benefit here, however, is that the element's styles are returned to what they were in the css stylesheet. As a consequence, you can write this up as a function where an element is passed through, and a height or width is returned.
Another issue I've found of setting the styles inline via js is that when dealing with transitions through css3, you become forced to adapt your style rules' weights to be stronger than an inline style, which can be frustrating sometimes.

By definition, an element only has height if it's visible.
Just curious: why do you need the height of a hidden element?
One alternative is to effectively hide an element by putting it behind (using z-index) an overlay of some kind).

In my circumstance I also had a hidden element stopping me from getting the height value, but it wasn't the element itself but rather one of it's parents... so I just put in a check for one of my plugins to see if it's hidden, else find the closest hidden element. Here's an example:
var $content = $('.content'),
contentHeight = $content.height(),
contentWidth = $content.width(),
$closestHidden,
styleAttrValue,
limit = 20; //failsafe
if (!contentHeight) {
$closestHidden = $content;
//if the main element itself isn't hidden then roll through the parents
if ($closestHidden.css('display') !== 'none') {
while ($closestHidden.css('display') !== 'none' && $closestHidden.size() && limit) {
$closestHidden = $closestHidden.parent().closest(':hidden');
limit--;
}
}
styleAttrValue = $closestHidden.attr('style');
$closestHidden.css({
position: 'absolute',
visibility: 'hidden',
display: 'block'
});
contentHeight = $content.height();
contentWidth = $content.width();
if (styleAttrValue) {
$closestHidden.attr('style',styleAttrValue);
} else {
$closestHidden.removeAttr('style');
}
}
In fact, this is an amalgamation of Nick, Gregory and Eyelidlessness's responses to give you the use of Gregory's improved method, but utilises both methods in case there is supposed to be something in the style attribute that you want to put back, and looks for a parent element.
My only gripe with my solution is that the loop through the parents isn't entirely efficient.

One workaround is to create a parent div outside the element you want to get the height of, apply a height of '0' and hide any overflow. Next, take the height of the child element and remove the overflow property of the parent.
var height = $("#child").height();
// Do something here
$("#parent").append(height).removeClass("overflow-y-hidden");
.overflow-y-hidden {
height: 0px;
overflow-y: hidden;
}
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div id="parent" class="overflow-y-hidden">
<div id="child">
This is some content I would like to get the height of!
</div>
</div>

Here's a script I wrote to handle all of jQuery's dimension methods for hidden elements, even descendants of hidden parents. Note that, of course, there's a performance hit using this.
// Correctly calculate dimensions of hidden elements
(function($) {
var originals = {},
keys = [
'width',
'height',
'innerWidth',
'innerHeight',
'outerWidth',
'outerHeight',
'offset',
'scrollTop',
'scrollLeft'
],
isVisible = function(el) {
el = $(el);
el.data('hidden', []);
var visible = true,
parents = el.parents(),
hiddenData = el.data('hidden');
if(!el.is(':visible')) {
visible = false;
hiddenData[hiddenData.length] = el;
}
parents.each(function(i, parent) {
parent = $(parent);
if(!parent.is(':visible')) {
visible = false;
hiddenData[hiddenData.length] = parent;
}
});
return visible;
};
$.each(keys, function(i, dimension) {
originals[dimension] = $.fn[dimension];
$.fn[dimension] = function(size) {
var el = $(this[0]);
if(
(
size !== undefined &&
!(
(dimension == 'outerHeight' ||
dimension == 'outerWidth') &&
(size === true || size === false)
)
) ||
isVisible(el)
) {
return originals[dimension].call(this, size);
}
var hiddenData = el.data('hidden'),
topHidden = hiddenData[hiddenData.length - 1],
topHiddenClone = topHidden.clone(true),
topHiddenDescendants = topHidden.find('*').andSelf(),
topHiddenCloneDescendants = topHiddenClone.find('*').andSelf(),
elIndex = topHiddenDescendants.index(el[0]),
clone = topHiddenCloneDescendants[elIndex],
ret;
$.each(hiddenData, function(i, hidden) {
var index = topHiddenDescendants.index(hidden);
$(topHiddenCloneDescendants[index]).show();
});
topHidden.before(topHiddenClone);
if(dimension == 'outerHeight' || dimension == 'outerWidth') {
ret = $(clone)[dimension](size ? true : false);
} else {
ret = $(clone)[dimension]();
}
topHiddenClone.remove();
return ret;
};
});
})(jQuery);

If you've already displayed the element on the page previously, you can simply take the height directly from the DOM element (reachable in jQuery with .get(0)), since it is set even when the element is hidden:
$('.hidden-element').get(0).height;
same for the width:
$('.hidden-element').get(0).width;
(thanks to Skeets O'Reilly for correction)

Javascript clientHeight inconsistency

When writing a Javascript a function that I had gotten help from earlier, which gets the height of an element that is hidden, someone reffered me to the Prototype function getDimensions(). In the example, they set "visibility: hidden; position: absolute; display: block;", which effectively lets us measure what the clientHeight would be if it were being displayed. Then they set it all back and you can go about your business. I haven't used prototype, but I would assume that works fine. However, when I tried to mimic the same function in my own code, the use of "position: absolute;" threw off the measurement. It works fine without it, but its use is what allows us to do this for a split second without skewing the design. My version is below, any idea why it isn't working?
var objStyle = obj[objName].style;
// Record original style values
var visibility = objStyle.visibility;
//var position = objStyle.position;
var display = objStyle.display;
// Modify object for measuring
objStyle.visibility = "hidden";
//objStyle.position = "absolute";
objStyle.display = "block";
// Measure height
height = obj[objName].clientHeight;
// Fix object
objStyle.visibility = visibility;
//objStyle.position = position;
objStyle.display = display;
// Return height
return parseInt(height);
Thanks in advance for your help.

I don't know if it works while invisible, but jQuery has some options here - in particular the height function; worth a look? Based on your example, something like:
height = $(obj[objName]).height();

Are you seeing this only on a cetain browser, or on all browsers? Prototype's getDimensions() does a check for Safari (and possibly other buggy browsers), you should try putting that in your code as well and see if it fixes the issue.
It could also be due to the fact that you're using obj[objName] as opposed to document.getElementById() - AFAIK these will return slightly different objects, which could cause the inconsistency you're seeing.

I usually measure my heights with .offsetHeight, something like:
var h = document.getElementById(divname).offsetHeight;
When I need to measure something, if it has position:absolute;
I usually run into this when I have two columns and one is absolute, and the parent needs to be pushed down by the one that's absolute if that's bigger than the other one. I'll use the offsetHeight to set the parent height if it's bigger that the height of the other column.