How to dynamically enter text in HTML?

[jalil]

How can I type text dynamically inside the body of my html document without using elements such as textarea? I basically like to show where the cursor is and let users just type and format text. Something like what you can do in Google Docs.

Thanks,

-J

[Medyman]

Google Docs is a very sophisticated application. Its a bit naive to attempt to replicate and probably not necessary for the functionality you need.

Just use a textarea and use CSS to make it invisible - remove border, background, etc... No one will be the wiser.

[jalil]

My problem with using TextArea is I need to put text with html tags in it and want the text to be processed as it happens if I put it in the body of the html document. If I do this using TextArea, it does not process it.

What do you recommend I do?

Thanks for your help,

-J

[djr33]

That's a paradox:
You want people to type in code.
You want people to see the results.

If you're trying to create a WYSIWYG editor, you can look at a couple scripts available on the site (search for OpenWYSIWYG for example).

But this is very complex and there are a few ways to work around it, but nothing too easy.

[Medyman]

Do you mean something like this (http://fundisom.com/live_preview.html)? or this (http://htmledit.squarefree.com/)?