Question

I have a website template where I do not know the number of menu items or the size of the menu items that will be required. The js below works exactly the way I want it to, however this is the most js I’ve every written. Are there any disadvantages or potential problems with this method that I’m not aware of because I’m a js beginner? I’m currently manually setting the padding for each site. Thank you!

var width_of_text = 0; 
var number_of_li = 0;

// measure the width of each <li> and add it to the total with, increment li counter
$('li').each(function() {
    width_of_text += $(this).width();
    number_of_li++;
});

// calculate the space between <li>'s so the space is equal
var padding = Math.floor((900 - width_of_text)/(number_of_li - 1));

// add the padding the all but the first <li>
$('li').each(function(index) {
    if (index !== 0)
    {
        $(this).css("padding-left", padding);
    }
});

Answer 1

Yes, there are disadvantages of using JS for formatting.

It is strongly recommended to avoid using JS for formatting and positioning, use CSS whenever possible.

Javascript is interpreted and run very differently from browser to browser, from OS to OS, from OS/browser version to version.

CSS rendering is a native browser engine function and its rendering priority is higher than that of JS.

CSS rendering is much more speedy than JS.

Etc.

What you are doing now I would never suggest doing. IMHO, this is a very wrong approach. JS is absolutely definetely misused in this case. You have to use CSS for this task, and I would suggest posting a question about how to use CSS correctly for this task.