Anyone know how to make an unscrollable TEXTAREA?

[Dean Trower]

Does anyone know a clean method of preventing scrolling altogether in a
TEXTAREA
(i.e. ensuring the user CANNOT type more text than fits inside the box
area)?

I'd like to know how, if so... It seems there should be a way to do it, but
I don't know of any, except via an awful javascript kludge.

Note: I am using a TEXTAREA with a proportional font and a size set in
pixels/ems via inline STYLE attribute.
I DON'T want to limit the number of characters, I just want to ensure that
the text can fit within the prescribed area
(so that when the inputted text is later re-displayed on a web page, it fits
in the allocated spot).
-- Dean Trower

please reply to: dean [at] omnivision [a dash goes here; yes, a DASH, not a
dot!] au [now, a dot] com

[Jim Moe]

Dean Trower wrote:

Does anyone know a clean method of preventing scrolling altogether in a
TEXTAREA
(i.e. ensuring the user CANNOT type more text than fits inside the box
area)?
No, not with HTML.
If you want to control the amount of text:
1. Truncate the input
2. Use one or more <input type="text" ...> boxes
I DON'T want to limit the number of characters, I just want to ensure that
the text can fit within the prescribed area

You don't want to limit the number of characters but you want to limit
the amount of text. Hmm.

(By "dash" I presume you mean a hyphen?)

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

[Benjamin Niemann]

Dean Trower wrote:

Note: I am using a TEXTAREA with a proportional font and a size set in
pixels/ems via inline STYLE attribute.
I DON'T want to limit the number of characters, I just want to ensure that
the text can fit within the prescribed area
(so that when the inputted text is later re-displayed on a web page, it
fits in the allocated spot).

This kind of 'pixel perfect WYSIWYG' won't work anyway - you don't know, if
a visitor has your prefered font installed or overrides your styles with
his/her own rules - probably a simple 'ctrl-+' will already break your
layout.
Instead of requiring unreasonable constraits on the text, make the layout
flexible enough to work with any text length and font size.
Constraits on the number of characters (e.g. 'the text excerpt should be
400..500 characters long') are valid and often used in content management
system. But these have nothing to do with layout and should not be abused
for it.

--
Benjamin Niemann
Email: pink at odahoda dot de
WWW: http://www.odahoda.de/

[AES]

In article <di**********@online.de>, Benjamin Niemann <pi**@odahoda.de>
wrote:

Dean Trower wrote:

Note: I am using a TEXTAREA with a proportional font and a size set in
pixels/ems via inline STYLE attribute.
I DON'T want to limit the number of characters, I just want to ensure that
the text can fit within the prescribed area
(so that when the inputted text is later re-displayed on a web page, it
fits in the allocated spot).

This kind of 'pixel perfect WYSIWYG' won't work anyway - you don't know, if
a visitor has your prefered font installed or overrides your styles with
his/her own rules - probably a simple 'ctrl-+' will already break your
layout.
Instead of requiring unreasonable constraits on the text, make the layout
flexible enough to work with any text length and font size.
Constraits on the number of characters (e.g. 'the text excerpt should be
400..500 characters long') are valid and often used in content management
system. But these have nothing to do with layout and should not be abused
for it.

Seems to me I've encountered text entry fields in web pages where the
field simply won't accept any more characters (or keystrokes) beyond
some (unstated) number, whether or not the field is visibly full. You
can however back up, delete, and reenter, up to the same total. No idea
how this is done, but seems to me I've encountered it more than once.

[Gérard Talbot]

Dean Trower a écrit :

Does anyone know a clean method of preventing scrolling altogether in a
TEXTAREA
(i.e. ensuring the user CANNOT type more text than fits inside the box
area)?

I'd like to know how, if so... It seems there should be a way to do it, but
I don't know of any, except via an awful javascript kludge.

Note: I am using a TEXTAREA with a proportional font and a size set in
pixels/ems via inline STYLE attribute.
This looks like rigid, overconstraining accurate-pixel design so far.
I DON'T want to limit the number of characters, I just want to ensure that
the text can fit within the prescribed area

You are asking for something contradictory here. What is exactly
supposed to constrained:
- the size of the textarea? You say you want to prevent scrolling of the
textarea box
- the number of characters: you say you don't want to limit the number
of characters.

Just try yourself in any editing environment. Type as much as you want
into a fixed size container.

Gérard
--
remove blah to email me

[Jim Moe]

AES wrote:

Seems to me I've encountered text entry fields in web pages where the
field simply won't accept any more characters (or keystrokes) beyond
some (unstated) number, whether or not the field is visibly full.

Javascript.

--
jmm (hyphen) list (at) sohnen-moe (dot) com
(Remove .AXSPAMGN for email)

[Chris Morris]

Jim Moe <jm***************@sohnen-moe.com> writes:

AES wrote:

Seems to me I've encountered text entry fields in web pages where
the field simply won't accept any more characters (or keystrokes)
beyond some (unstated) number, whether or not the field is visibly
full.

Javascript.

Or the advisory maxlength attribute, where the browser supports it.

--
Chris

[Leif K-Brooks]

Chris Morris wrote:

Jim Moe <jm***************@sohnen-moe.com> writes:

AES wrote:

Seems to me I've encountered text entry fields in web pages where
the field simply won't accept any more characters (or keystrokes)
beyond some (unstated) number, whether or not the field is visibly
full.

Javascript.

Or the advisory maxlength attribute, where the browser supports it.

The TEXTAREA element doesn't have a maxlength attribute.