Jquery/JS hidden elements dimention/position - with accordion and AJAX :(

Question

HTML

<div id='accordion'>
     <h5>Header 1</h5>
     <ul>
        <li>section 1 content visible</li>
        <li>
             <div id=showhide>
                   <textarea id=usertext>
                   user entered text here,scalable
                   </textarea>
             </div>
        </li>
     </ul>
     <h5>Header 2</h5>
     <ul>
        <li>section 2 content 1</li>
        <li>section 2 content X</li>
     </ul>

</div>

#showhide can be either visible or hidden (to save space) How to get dimensions of #usertext regardless of which section of accordion is expanded and whether #showhide is visible or collapsed?

jquery's .width() does not return value for hidden elements. I could potentially set display:block but there are a lot of elements on the page and I send dimensions in async JS post, I cannot coordinate the timing of showing elements and getting its dimensions. I don't want to go to sync since page will freeze for a long time.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Maybe this plugin could help you: http://plugins.jquery.com/project/evenIfHidden