Is 'width' applicable to a textarea?

Question

Is the CSS 'width' property applicable to a <textarea>?

In practice, people say that they use it successfully, for example using a rule like this:

textarea
{
    width:100%;
}

What's confusing me is that the CSS 2.1 specification for width says,

This property specifies the content width of boxes generated by block-level and replaced elements. This property does not apply to non-replaced inline-level elements.

I thought that a textarea is an inline-level element, because e.g. markup like this ...

<p>
This is some more text:
<textarea name="mytextarea" rows="3" cols="15">Text in the text area</textarea>
And even more, more text.
</p>

... creates a single paragraph block with text to the left and right of the <textarea>, and that therefore according to the spec the width shouldn't be applicable.

Quentin · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-31 19:15:50Z

6

Textarea is an inline level element… a replaced inline element (you get a form control, not the simple content of the element).

The spec excludes non-replaced inline elements, but textarea is not one of them.

answered Aug 31, 2009 at 19:15

Quentin

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superUntitled · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-31 19:20:36Z

0

Width is not an acceptable attribute of the textarea element. The size of a textarea can be specified by the cols and rows attributes, although it can be better controlled through the CSS height and width properties.

answered Aug 31, 2009 at 19:20

superUntitled

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Comments

GSto · Accepted Answer · 2009-08-31 19:17:22Z

-1

you should use the 'cols' property to set the width of the textarea.

http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/tag_textarea.asp

answered Aug 31, 2009 at 19:17

GSto

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1 Comment

Quentin Over a year ago

No. You should specify the number of cols, but if you really want to set the width than CSS is much more flexible. (And avoid W3Schools, it is error prone).

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