textarea syntax

Hi;

  i've been toying with the textarea tag while
building a webpage with HTML 4.0/XHTML 1.0; I
found it very hard to manage and here is why:

  * the only 'presentation' tags allowed are
'cols' and 'rows' which hint the user browser
about the size of the area in which the user may
enter his data;

  now, the trouble is, you can't get any info
about the user screen width without resorting to
'external' help like javascript.  Using the
Galeon browser (which uses the Gecko rendering
engine (brought by Mozilla)), if you use a too
large value for 'cols', the canvas simply expands
horizontally and the user has to scroll
horizontally (annoying).  I don't know about
other browsers, but the point is that the html
code has to suggest appearance, and that is
non-conforming to new standards.

  the displaying tags like <p> don't require any
info about the screen size and these tags format
text according to the user screen width.  I don't
see why a textarea has to be as static as rows
and columns.

  it'd be nice to have a parameter like 'length'
(or whatever name you select) in the textarea tag
to allow proper formatting.  As in:

<textarea name="x" length="512"></textarea>

  which would basically mean "cols=32 rows=16" in
a 32-column environment and "cols=64 rows=8" in a
64-column environment.

  i just hope that this isn't already on topic (
i just subscribed to the list for that very reason)

  good day to all,

--
Wayne A. Ptaff
ptaff@beer.com


 
   


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Received on Wednesday, 17 October 2001 23:52:00 UTC