html, css, javascript with textarea

Question

I need to make a text editor for my site. Here are a few questions that I have:

How can I retrieve the row selected in the text area using JavaScript?
How can I style the first line of the text without styling all rows the same?

Here is an example of what I need:

<textarea>
    <span class='center_align'>Hello world</span>
    <span class='left_align'>This is a nice paragraph aligned to the left.</span>
</textarea>

I know <textarea> reads HTML into its input, but how would I go about to style this?

If these are your requirements, then you're looking at something more complex than just a textarea unfortunately; you cannot style a textarea in the manner you require. — Adrian Wragg, Aug 21 '13 at 23:52
Hmm i just looked into someone elses source code which is extremely long -.- and crypted.. (IPB) .. And they do it using iframe. Is there another reliable way? — THE AMAZING, Aug 21 '13 at 23:57

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 21 '13 at 23:58

2

Sounds like you need a Rich Text Editor: try TinyMCE (as used by WordPress): http://www.tinymce.com/

answered Aug 21 '13 at 23:58

Alfie

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Yees that is exactly what i need, but i need to create the editor myself. i cannot use 3rd party – THE AMAZING Aug 22 '13 at 00:16
If your concerns are regarding inclusion within a commercial project, TinyMCE is licensed under LGPL, see this post for more info: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2145216/gnu-lesser-gpl-application-sell Otherwise, if you must still do it yourself, my approach would be to use a regular `div` to present the styled output, combined with a lot of JavaScript to make the div editable and act like a typical textarea – Alfie Aug 22 '13 at 00:24
you can't do it by using only a textarea. If you see the html markup of TinyMCE, the content you are adding is not only a text but a html markup inside an iframe. use firebug and see how it's working... – Ryxle Aug 22 '13 at 05:20

html, css, javascript with textarea

1 Answers1