Text Area Fields

Text Area fields are much like the Text fields described in the previous section.  The feature of the text area fields is that it can accept multiple lines of entry.  The field has automatic word wrap and scrolling built-in.  Text Area fields have no maximum amount that can be entered into the field.  An example of a text field might look like:

There are a few different types of Text Area Field definitions:

• Text Area (auto height):  This type attempts to vary the size of the text area depending on the amount of data.  If the amount of data being shown is large, the area will be larger.  The reverse is true for a small amount of data.

• Text Area with Counter:  This type of text area comes with a counter.  It will provide the user with a real-time counter of the number of character they have entered into the text area. 

• Text Area with Spell Checker:  This text area integrates a Spell Checker with the text area.  For now, it is only configured for the English language.  An icon will be next to the text area.  The user can click that to spell check what is entered.  Figure 10.36 shows the spell checker results.

• Text Area with Spell Checker and Counter:  The type combines the Spell Checker and the text counter. 

• Text Area with HTML Editor:  This text area provides the user will some basic editing controls for the text.  The user can do formatting such as bold, italics, underline, fonts, size, colors and so forth.  The controls are simple but do help the user provide some formatting to the data.  The formatting will converted to the HTML equivalent tags:  Bold will convert to <strong>, italics to <em> and underline to <u>.  This must be taken into consideration because these new tags will take up space.

The attributes for the Text Area are all the same as a Text Field but the height will now have to be configured.  This will create the text area for the number of lines specified.