TextArea+, enhancing textareas with JavaScript
(This post is constantly updated)
The last days I’ve been very busy programming. Not a course assignment or research project – I’ve been programming in JavaScript to solve one of those small sources of irritation that you encounter on the web of today – textareas. In web applications such as WordPress and Joomla you constantly use textareas to write contents and code, and then you save them by pressing “Submit” and the page reloads. In Firefox, you cannot search (or replace) through a textarea without special solutions, and you cannot use the Tab-key to indent code. All this is now a part of the past 😉
TextArea+ (currently in alpha status, i.e. buggy) is a very simple JavaScript and AJAX solution that let you turn any textarea on any site into an enhanced textarea with better functionality. In the same time, it’s small, unobtrusive and don’t cause strange problems (unlike many JavaScript WYSIWYG editors). TextArea+ works as a bookmarklet, making the ease of installation unsurpassed.
Features
- Search and replace in textarea with regular expressions
- Save the contents with Alt + S or button without having to reload the page (using AJAX, only works if the textarea affected is part of a POST-form)
- Pressing Tab in the TextArea inserts a Tab instead of switching to next page element
- One-click validation at W3C as HTML or CSS
- No install needed, only the use of a bookmarklet link.
- Small, unobtrusive and uses the same design as the page you are viewing
- Completely free, of course
Requirements (TextArea+ 0.1 (alpha)
- Firefox 1.5+ or IE6 (lots of browser compability testing needed)
- For saving features, try only in WordPress 2 Theme editor
Download / installation
The current release is: TextArea+ 0.1 (alpha). I need testers to try out and comment the application. Install by dragging or copying the following link to your bookmarks:
Future features
- Full support for IE and Safari
- Install as Greasemonkey script.
- Dynamic save support for more systems than WordPress
- Syntax highlightning (requires replacing textareas with a “fake” textarea)
- More fail safe against different variations of pages, styles and forms
- Suggest features yourself! Comment below!
Known bugs
- Searching in Firefox won’t scroll the textarea down.
- More to come if you test the application…
Disclaimer
This software is in alpha status and is to be considered unreliable. It can alter the information being edited without notice and save it. Do not use for other than testing purposes. I take no responsbility for any damage what-so-ever caused by TextArea +, the risk is completely yours.