how to use substr() function in jquery?

Extract characters from a string:

var str = "Hello world!";
var res = str.substring(1,4);

The result of res will be:

ell

http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_substring.asp

$('.dep_buttons').mouseover(function(){
    $(this).text().substring(0,25);
    if($(this).text().length > 30) {
        $(this).stop().animate({height:"150px"},150);
    }
    $(".dep_buttons").mouseout(function(){
        $(this).stop().animate({height:"40px"},150);
    });
});