javascript - bold text in textarea

Question

i'm trying to write a very simple wysiwyg editor, where users can simply add bold text, hyperlinks and bullets, after selecting part of the text.. actualy just like CKEditor.

But as far as i know there is no way to add formatting to a textarea. So I would like to know, how do other wysiwyg editors like CKEditor solve this.

Answer 1

Well, this doesn't answer the question about how they do it, but you can apply styling to a textarea. Just try:

<textarea style="font-weight:bold;"> </textarea>

As to how editors like the CKEditor do it, most do it by applying a ton of javascript and css to make a <div> seem like a <textarea>. That's how I did it in a MS class on AJAX. Also, if you view the rendered source on the CKEditor demo, you'll see that everything for the input area is a combination of <div> elements.