jQuery how to get innerWidth but without the padding?

From the docs, innerWidth does almost what I need:

"Gets the inner width (excludes the border and includes the padding) for the first matched element."

I need to know the width excluding the padding. I.e. the usable space inside the element.

Does jquery provide anything like this - done a bit of googling and can't find any solutions.

I thought about getting the padding-left and padding-rig开发者_运维百科ht values to subtract from inner width- But given these could be percentages, pixels or em I'm not sure if this would be reliable.

Any suggestions?

You're probably just looking for the width() function..

See the docs, it excludes the padding: http://api.jquery.com/width/

(Just as intended in modern browser's representation of the css width property)

Edit: It's now 2012 and jQuery 1.8 is just coming out. While this is still relevant, you may also want to read the following article from the jQuery blog regarding box-sizing considerations in version 1.8

$('#element').width();

It's as simple as that!