see fiddle

html

<div class="e" style="left:5px;top:5px;">aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb</div>

<div class="e" style="left:5px;top:100px;">aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa</div>?

css

.e {
    font-size: 10px;
    font-family: arial;
    background-color: yellow;
    position: absolute;
    max-width: 300px;
}

you will notice the 2nd div fits the size of the content exactly, but on the first div there's a bunch of empty space to the right of the a's and b's. This is because the div hit its max width of 300px and then wrapped the b's to a 2nd line. The wrapping is good, but then I would expect the div to then shrink back down to the width of the a's so that there's no empty space to the right.

Is it possible to get it to do this?

Tested in Chrome and FF. ?