Animate an element's width from 0 to 100%, with it and it's wrapper being only as wide as they need to be, without a pre-set width, in CSS3 or jQuery

I think I've got it.

.wrapper {
    background:#DDD;
    display:inline-block;
    padding: 10px;
    height: 20px;
    width:auto;
}

.label {
    display: inline-block;
    width: 1em;
}

.contents, .contents .inner {
    display:inline-block;
}

.contents {
    white-space:nowrap;
    margin-left: -1em;
    padding-left: 1em;
}

.contents .inner {
    background:#c3c;
    width:0%;
    overflow:hidden;
    -webkit-transition: width 1s ease-in-out;
    -moz-transition: width 1s ease-in-out;
    -o-transition: width 1s ease-in-out;
    transition: width 1s ease-in-out;
}



.wrapper:hover .contents .inner {
   
    width:100%;
}

<div class="wrapper">
    <span class="label">+</span><div class="contents">
        <div class="inner">
            These are the contents of this div
        </div>
    </div>
</div>

Animating to 100% causes it to wrap because the box is bigger than the available width (100% minus the + and the whitespace following it).

Instead, you can animate an inner element, whose 100% is the total width of .contents.

http://jsfiddle.net/tVHYg/5/

.wrapper {
    background:#DDD;
    padding:1%;
    display:inline;
    height:20px;
}


span {
    width: 1%;
}

.contents {
    background:#c3c;
    overflow:hidden;
    white-space:nowrap;
    display:inline-block;
    width:0%;
}



.wrapper:hover .contents {
    -webkit-transition: width 1s ease-in-out;
    -moz-transition: width 1s ease-in-out;
    -o-transition: width 1s ease-in-out;
    transition: width 1s ease-in-out;

    width:90%;
}

Got it to work by transitioning the padding as well as the width.

JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/tuybk748/1/

<div class='label gray'>+
</div><!-- must be connected to prevent gap --><div class='contents-wrapper'>
    <div class="gray contents">These are the contents of this div</div>
</div>

.gray {
    background: #ddd;
}
.contents-wrapper, .label, .contents {
    display: inline-block;
}
.label, .contents {
    overflow: hidden; /* must be on both divs to prevent dropdown behavior */
    height: 20px;
}
.label {
    padding: 10px 10px 15px;
}
.contents {
    padding: 10px 0px 15px; /* no left-right padding at beginning */
    white-space: nowrap; /* keeps text all on same line */
    width: 0%;
    -webkit-transition: width 1s ease-in-out, padding-left 1s ease-in-out, 
        padding-right 1s ease-in-out;
    -moz-transition: width 1s ease-in-out, padding-left 1s ease-in-out, 
        padding-right 1s ease-in-out;
    -o-transition: width 1s ease-in-out, padding-left 1s ease-in-out, 
        padding-right 1s ease-in-out;
    transition: width 1s ease-in-out, padding-left 1s ease-in-out, 
        padding-right 1s ease-in-out;
}
.label:hover + .contents-wrapper .contents {
    width: 100%;
    padding-left: 10px;
    padding-right: 10px;
}