Format text in a <textarea>?
CssHtmlTextareaCss Problem Overview
Textareas are great because of some built in functionality (scrollbars). How can I format <spans>
of text inside of the <textarea>
?
Css Solutions
Solution 1 - Css
If you need to customize your textarea, reproduce its behavior using another element (like a DIV) with the contenteditable
attribute.
It's more customizable, and a more modern approach, textarea is just for plain text content, not for rich content.
<div id="fake_textarea" contenteditable></div>
The scrollbars can be reproduced with the CSS overflow property.
You can use this fake textarea in a form normally, i.e: if you have to submit its content through POST method, you could do something like(with jQuery):
<input type="hidden" id="fake_textarea_content" name="foobar">
...
$('#your_form').submit(function()
{
$('#fake_textarea_content').val($('#fake_textarea').html());
});
Solution 2 - Css
You Can't style the content of a text area separately, you have to use <div>
s, or something similar.
Do you Want Something like this:?
http://jsfiddle.net/mekwall/XNkDx/
$('.editable').each(function(){
this.contentEditable = true;
});
This allows you to edit the content of a div, and it will still look like a textarea,
Bold will now Work.
Solution 3 - Css
You cannot use HTML inside TEXTAREA
.
Scrolling can be applied to any element by adding overflow: auto
and fixed width
and/or height
.
Solution 4 - Css
You can user html editors for web like CKEditor to be able to format the data in text area. Check this http://ckeditor.com/
Solution 5 - Css
Another way to submit the "fake" text area is including the following lines inside the form tag
<form onsubmit=" $('#fake_textarea_content').val($('#fake_textarea').html());">
</form>