This may not be simple or even possible. The width is a number because it is used in all kinds of calculations and situations in the plugin: resizing, positioning, effects, dragging, comparing with minWidth, etc. Allowing "auto" and other units (e.g. in, em, %) may affect a lot of things.

Also, a width of "auto" or other units may not do what you expect across browsers and layouts, especially for an absolute-positioned element that can move around. E.g. in a CSS reference book there's almost half a page explaining the intricacies of "auto". And % is a % of "containing block," (not always the parent) which is again highly inconsistent across browsers and layouts.

Add to this that a jQuery dialog can potentially be detached and re-attached to anywhere else in the DOM tree, making "auto" and other units even more unpredictable.

And, if allowing "auto" and other units were not that complicated, the original author would have done it already.

FYI: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2231446/automatically-resize-jquery-ui-dialog-to-the-width-of-the-content-loaded-by-ajax

Set width to auto as suggested above. (Not much of a fix. He just said set resizable to false and width to auto and it works for him.) Immediate problems:

1. See screenshot-01.png.
2. See screenshot-02.png. (I have shown this side effect more than once in the past.)
3. Effects don't look right either in IE. See video at http://screencast.com/t/d5mPTOz4BRRs.

Suggested fix, like most any user-suggested fix we have seen in the past, only works for the user's case. They never think much about working across all browsers and layouts.

Need to test IE8, IE9 to see if the IE issues are IE7 specific or not. Should also test Chrome as well.

If issue #2 and #3 are IE7 specific, create a new JIRA to document the limitations with IE7 for now and we'll make them known issues. You should note in the TLD docs the limitations with AUTO combined with resizable, and also IE7.

Issue #2 and #3 are IE7 specific. Not in FF, Chrome, Safari, IE8, IE9.
New JIRA: ICE-7457. See also ICE-7400.
TLD docs updated.

Revision: 26297

Modified : /icefaces-ee/scratchpads/grimlock/icefaces/ace/component/resources/icefaces.ace/dialog/dialog.js
Modified : /icefaces-ee/scratchpads/grimlock/icefaces/ace/component/resources/icefaces.ace/jquery/ui/jquery-ui.css
Modified : /icefaces-ee/scratchpads/grimlock/icefaces/ace/component/src/org/icefaces/ace/component/dialog/DialogMeta.java
Modified : /icefaces-ee/scratchpads/grimlock/icefaces/ace/component/src/org/icefaces/ace/component/dialog/DialogRenderer.java

ICE-7610.