<textarea cols="">

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HTML5 Textarea Attributes: Here's What You Should Know

What does <textarea cols=""> do?

Specifies the visible width of a <textarea> element in average character widths. Defaults to 20 if not specified.

Code Example

<textarea cols="40" placeholder="Approximately 40 characters will fit on a line" style="width:auto; font-family:monospace;"></textarea>

Controlling the Width of a textarea

There are two ways of controlling the width of a textarea:

• The cols attribute.
• The width CSS property.

The cols attribute is used to tell the browser how many average-width characters should fit on a single line. The width attribute simply controls how the browser visually presents the textarea. It’s important to note that the width attribute will overrule the cols attribute–even if the cols attribute is specified after the width property. For example, the follow code will produce a textarea that is 100 pixels wide regardless of the cols attribute applied to the textarea.

<style>   .example {     width: 300px;   } </style> <textarea class="example" cols="20"></textarea> 

When rendered by the browser, the cols="20" attribute is effectively ignored by the browser.

Adam Wood

Adam is a technical writer who specializes in developer documentation and tutorials.