Html Textarea

[M12_GTO]

Is it possible to format the text within a text area for example I want some bits bold. I've tried this:

<TEXTAREA NAME="whatever" ROWS="93" COLS="69">
Lots of <B>words</B>
</TEXTAREA>

But it treats <B> as text, not realising I want it bold!!! :) Is there a special character that I must put before the <B>?

[MrG]

try doing it with lowercase letters in the tags

and it seems stupid but my housemate did this the other day, make sure you save as html file :P

[Mist]

I don't think that you can do this.

lower case tags won't make any difference, though it is good practice anyway because to write valid xhtml all your tags should be lower case.

[Kazbo]

Isn't a text area only meant to be for user input on a form anyway, so you wouldn't know what the user wanted bold. So if you added bold tags to whatever you're writing in there as instructions, it would confuse user input afterwards.

[M12_GTO]

I am such a narrow minded fcuk! Once I get an idea in my head the blinkers are on. I am creating an ASP page and was putting the output in a textarea and trying to format it but then I was out drinking and thought, fcuk the textarea, why not output the text to a scrollable div and format it within that. I'm sucha retard!!!

Any tips on quick thinking? I'm crap at it!