Is there a cross-browser way to condense text on a page?

Question

I am looking for a way to condense relatively small areas of text on a page in an effort to mimic a graphic button that was done with a non-standard font. Ideally, just the letters would get squished or made thinner, leaving the space between words more or less the same. I know there are some CSS attributes that do things like this, but they are more focused on spacing between the letters and not so much on the widths of the letters themselves. These CSS methods are also not very cross-browser friendly. The majority of the user base is using IE6, so that puts a large restriction on CSS-based methods out of the blocks.

So, is there any way to control the character width/spacing that is cross-browser friendly? I know jQuery works across browsers quite well, so could this perhaps be done with jQuery by manipulating the location of the letters and possibly their widths? These are small bits of text, 5 words at a time, or so, so speed is something that can be dealt with later.

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EDIT: Ok, so, the CSS letter-spacing property, as well as the word-spacing property will allow me to control the space between letters/words. However, this makes things look squished. If this truly is the only option, then I'll have to make it work, but what I am really looking for is a way to squish the letters themselves, to make the characters thinner.

Answer 1

maybe

letter-spacing:-1px

will help