I need a way to format data in a textarea box

I have a form that has a textarea part. I need to know if there is a way to format the data like in word so that the users of my site who enter data into the field don't have to know html formating.

Thanks for any help.

I think your looking for a WYSIWYG editor, try EditWorks Professional

I need a WYSIWYG editor that just does <textarea> replacement. I don't need all of the other stuff. Also, I'm on a limited budget (none). If there is a free <textarea> replacement script/program that I can use would be best. I might be able to get some funds, but only if the program does what I need, and not all the other stuff. I don't know if this will be possible, probably not, but it never hurts to try.

Mahanri,

What do you mean the "other stuff"... As far as I know, EditWorks Pro provides a Word-like interface.

If you're looking for a low-cost alternative, try reading Mitch's article Building a WYSIWYG HTML Editor Part 1/2 .

From what I've read and understand, most WYSIWYG editors are like Frontpage. You create websites with them. All I need is a replacement for the <textarea> tag. I'm looking into using Mitch's
WYSIWYG HTML editor. It looks promising. I've never used Java though, so I'm looking forward to learning something new. Thanks for the help.

Mahanri,

That's what EditWorks does... It replaces the textarea... No more than that. It just simplifies entering content without the worries of HTML coding.

Mahanri,

Just to let you know its javascript and not java, there is a big difference between the two.

Ben I played around with the online demo for editworks,...it appears that their javascript functions don't like netscape :/

That's because it is MSIE proprietary code

The only way you can make WYSIWYG work on netscape is either using java applets or activex, which are both slow and big to download.

Anyway out of the 93% of people that use IE to browse the net, 76% of them use IE 5.5 and higher.