The "cols" attribute is required in valid HTML but I don't see the benefit of using it. Do you?
views:
63answers:
5Yes, but you can do the same through CSS and do it much more precisely.
Emanuil
2010-08-03 11:44:13
The spec predates common CSS support and use (and given a monospace font (the default), columns is usually a much easier way to get the precise width you want)
David Dorward
2010-08-03 11:46:26
+2
A:
If the client does not support CSS, it will still be able to see <textarea> with right width.
fuwaneko
2010-08-03 11:44:34
Are there clients that do not CSS and if the <textarea> requires a "cols" attribute, why the <input type="text"> does not?
Emanuil
2010-08-03 11:47:26
Because it has other attributes: `<input type="text" size="10" maxlength="20">` See also: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#h-17.4
Denilson Sá
2010-08-03 11:54:45
Because it only makes sense for `text` and `password` types, and the `<input>` element is also used for `radio`, `checkbox`, `button`... Also remember the spec was made to officialize the behavior already common among existing browsers. It doesn't need to make perfect sense.
Denilson Sá
2010-08-03 12:04:16
@Emanuil. Lynx does not support CSS for example. The HTML specification does not give any answers on your quiestion. It just says, "cols and rows are required". I think they are required as fallback if browser doesn't support CSS, or if user disabled it; it's reasonable. Also CSS width/height and cols/rows act differently.
fuwaneko
2010-08-03 12:06:39
A:
Check out this link.. Might help you -
http://www.highdots.com/forums/cascading-style-sheets/textarea-cols-width-261859.html
also this one -
http://www.highdots.com/forums/html/purpose-cols-rows-textarea-275801.html
Sachin Shanbhag
2010-08-03 11:45:55
A:
When browsers and html parsing software looks at HTML it will be looking for a set of mandatory attributes on a tag. Such as every <img> tag needs an alt="" attribute.
So when running your site through a HTML validator you need to make sure the mandatory attributes are in place else validation will fail..
Secondly when a user is using assistive technologies, they tend to turn off CSS/Javascript altogether so making sure you have cols="" in there is important. Screan readers and such may not be able to parse your webpage properly if it can't find required attributes for your markup.
Conclusion: Theres a bigger picture than just tweaking some stylesheet info. Make sure you conform to spec. If you want to style things pretty make sure you have sensible fallback for non-css webpages.
Paul Dragoonis
2010-08-03 12:22:50