What Is a "textarea" Tag/Element?

A "textarea" element is an inline element that you can use to define a large input area in a form. Here are basic rules about a "textarea" element:

• "textarea" elements are inline elements.
• "textarea" elements can only be used as sub-elements of "form" elements.
• A "textarea" element requires an attribute called "rows" to define the number of rows of the input area.
• A "textarea" element requires an attribute called "cols" to define the number of columns of the input area.
• A "textarea" element can have empty content.
• A "textarea" element can have text content.
• A "textarea" element can no have any sub-elements.
• A "textarea" element will be displayed by browsers as a rectangular input area.
• Content of a "textarea" element will be displayed as default data in the input area.

Here is a tutorial example of "textarea" input fields:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
 <head>
  <title>Textarea Input Fields</title>
 </head>
 <body>
  <h4>Online Survey</h4>
  <form action="http://localhost/submit" method="get">
  <p style="background-color: #eeeeee; padding: 8px;">
   Your name: <input type="text" name="name"
    value="Joe"/><br/>
   Feedback: <textarea cols="16" rows="4">Nice site.
    </textarea><br/>
   <input type="submit" value="Submit"/> 
  </p>
  </form>
 </body>
</html>

If you save the above document as text_area.html, and view it with Internet Explorer, you will see a text input area in the form as shown below:

⇒ HTML 'textarea' Element Attributes

⇐ Using HTML 'button' Input Fields

⇑ HTML Forms and Input Fields

⇑⇑ HTML Tutorials