I noticed something similar happening in Mozilla, and I fixed it.

The textareas all have wrap="virtual" in them, which Mozilla doesn't use because it's not in the HTML4 (and therefore XHTML1) spec. That meant that the text was not wrapping.  The solution is to include the cols attribute.

I know you all want to control the size of the textareas using CSS only, which does work in Mozilla/NS6, but wrapping doesn't work without the cols attribute.

Since you're using pixels for the type size, I just divided the width of each textarea by 10 and rounded to the nearest 5, so if the width was 310, I used cols="30".  There are only 8 textareas in all the templates (mt/tmpl/cms/), so it's a pretty easy fix to make.

I recommend this change for the next release, but it's a pretty simple fix for users to make ourselves in the meantime.

Yes, please and thank you.

Also, do you *replace* the width parameter with "cols=", or just add it?

Best,  Graham

Cheelman, you're certainly not overstepping anything.

I only wish I had seen your post before I wrote my instructions.

I like yours better so we'll leave it at that.

I'll add this:

Even though this fix seems to apply mostly to Netscape 4.x, users should note (as mentioned previously) that the crazy Netscape 6 incompatibility with the "wrap" command will require this fix as well.

Graham,

These textareas:


are fine as is.  

About the buttons not appearing in Netscape 4.x -- Big bug! Thanks for catching that. I can't believe I missed it. We did test in 4.x to our best abilities. After a while, you just start seeing what you expect to see.

Thanks!

In Netscape 6, as noted in an above reply, does not wrap the text when typing an entry, (though it does display text as wrapped when you save the entry and view it in the weblog.)

I have taken a look at these "fixes", but I don't think the line numbers apply. Can somebody give some more explicit instructions on what to do with short310 and wrap="virtual"?

It's harder to edit an entry when it's all on a few lines and I can't see most of what I wrote. I'd like to be able to fix this. Could I just change wrap="virtual" to wrap="soft"?

Note: I use Netscape 6 sometimes and IE 6 sometimes, so I'd like something that would make it the same in both. ;-)

It's the wrap issue that I'm interested in...I don't have a problem with the size of the textarea.
But thanks.

The textareas in, for example, the "Create New Entry" and "Edit Templates" areas, are about 20 characters wide.  (Netscape 4.7 on a Linux box)

Sorry, no helpful suggestions.  

Welcome to one our biggest UI problems -- We were determined to use CSS since we wanted to control the width, but were quite aware of the wrapping issue.

We kind of just pushed the problem aside since it was so frustrating. Other options would be having a browser-specific style loaded.

We'd like to have a fix for it in the next release, but like Chellman said, there are pretty easy user-side workarounds that can be implemented in the time being.

gleuschk: do you want me to post the exact places you should make the change?

I hope I'm not overstepping my bounds here, but since I've already done it, I figured I'd answer this one.

The width is set in CSS, and you don't have to touch it.  Here are the spots:

bm_entry.tmpl - Line 101
edit_blog.tmpl - Line 192
edit_comment.tmpl - Line 128
edit_entry.tmpl - Lines 187, 293, 301, 469
edit_template.tmpl - Line 149

Also, if your individual archive template has a comment posting form, you'll want to change it there.

The class attribute of each textarea tells its width.  So class="short310" means a 310px wide textarea.  I used cols="30" for that, just 310/10 = 31 rounded to the nearest 5, for 30.  It looks good and works well for me.

Thanks to you both.   They look many times better now.

One or two small concerns (I guess I'm talking to you here, chellman):
# - in edit_blog.tmpl, line 192, the textarea isn't given a width - I just left it alone (how often do you need to re-describe your blog, anyway?)
# - in edit_comment.tmpl, line 128, it's already set to cols="50" - I left that one alone too.

Sound like the right thing?

While I've got you here and I'm up to my elbows in template files, the buttons on the "List Templates" page don't show up (in Netscape 4.x still). Is there an easy way to reappear them?  (side concern - should this be a separate thread?)

Graham

Just wanted to get this topic back toward the top of the board, since it seems some others are running into similar problems.  The fixes outlined here worked fine in versions 1.x - no reason why they shouldn't in 2.0.  (Ben and Mena, any caveats?)

Nope, no caveats, fixes will still work fine. We are, BTW, considering getting rid of the width setting, or trying to figure out ways around it, because of this and other issues.

Sorry - the line numbers have, of course, changed dramatically since version 1.0.  I just do a text search for <textarea>.  

Once you find it, here's the program. If the class of the textarea is, for example, "short310", divide 310 by 10 (getting 31) and round to the nearest five (getting 30).  Then add cols="30" to the textarea tag.

Sorry, I can't help with the wrap issues.