Guys,

I'm populating a dropDownList with arrayCollection of strings. I want the width of the drop down list control to match with the size (in pixels) of the longest string in the array collection. The problem I'm facing is: the font width of the strings in the collection are different e.g. 'W' looks wider than 'l'. So I estimated the width of a character to be 8 pixels but that's not pretty neat. If a string that has many 'W' and 'M' is encountered the estimation is wrong. So I want precise pixel width of strings. How can i get the exact length of a string in pixels??

My solution that estimates all character to be 8 pixels wide is given below:

public function populateDropDownList():void{
    var array:Array = new Array("o","two","three four five six seven eight wwww");
    var sampleArrayCollection:ArrayCollection = new ArrayCollection(array);
    var customDropDownList:DropDownList = new DropDownList();
    customDropDownList.dataProvider=sampleArrayCollection;
    customDropDownList.prompt="Select ...";
    customDropDownList.labelField="Answer Options:";
    //calculating the max width
    var componentWidth=10; //default
    for each(var answerText in array){
     Alert.show("Txt size: "+ answerText.length + " pixels: " + answerText.length*9); 
     if(answerText.length * 8 > componentWidth){
      componentWidth=answerText.length * 8;
     }
    }
    customDropDownList.width=componentWidth;
    answers.addChild(customDropDownList);
   }

Any idea or solution is highly valued.

Thanks