need background color for dynamic text

Hi,

I am have ajax loaded dynamic text. I've kept overflow for text box "visible".

width: 200px, height: 30px. Since overflow is visible, the text automatically expands (vertically).

The problem comes when i want to use background color for the text. I used this:

sym.$("textbox").css("background-color", "red");

But this sets the color only for 30 px. and there will be extra text hanging without a background color. Increasing the height of the box to a fixed number is not a option - if the text is small there will empty colored space in the box.

Is there a way to dynamically set the background color to the length of text?

Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks in Advance.