A jQuery extension to return only the visible text in a node.

jquery.visibletext.js

jQuery.fn.visibleText = function() {
  if (this.length === 0) return null;
  if (this.length > 1)   return this.first().visibleText();
  if (this[0].nodeType === 3) return this.text();

  var buffer = [];
  $.each(this.contents(), function(ix, e) {
    if ($(e).is(':visible')) {
      return buffer.push($(e).visibleText());
    }
  });

  buffer.join('');
};

Your function seems to have quite a few problems. Wouldn't something like this work better?

    $.fn.visibleText = function() {
      if (this.length === 0)
            return '';

      if (this.length === 1 && this[0].nodeType === 3)
            return this.text();

      var visibleText = '';

      $.each(this.contents(), function(index, element) {
        var theElement = $(element);

        if (theElement.is(':visible'))
          visibleText += theElement.visibleText();
      });

      return visibleText;
    };