Simple jQuery string padding function

I’ve written a very simple jQuery function to return a string padded to a specified length, similar to the php equivalent str_pad.

$.strPad = function(i,l,s) {
	var o = i.toString();
	if (!s) { s = '0'; }
	while (o.length < l) {
		o = s + o;
	}
	return o;
};

Example Usage:

$.strPad(12, 5); // returns 00012
$.strPad('abc', 6, '#'); // returns ###abc

This version only supports left padding, which is why it is labelled as only a simple version :) .

CSS Opacity in Opera using jQuery

Whilst attempting to cross browser test a jQuery plug-in that I’m currently working on, I noticed that my opacity settings were being ignored in my current version of Opera (9.23).

$("#id").css({opacity: 0.8});

It turns out that the latest version of jQuery (1.3.1) doesn’t believe that Opera 9.2 supports CSS opacity, and therefore it is ignored completely. Continue reading