textarea with 100% width ignores parent element

Question

I have the following textarea in a table:

<table width="300"><tr><td>

<textarea style="width:100%">
longstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstring
</textarea>

</td></tr></table>

With a long string in the textarea, the textarea stretches out to accommodate it in one line in IE7, but retains its 300px width in other browsers.

Any ideas as to how to fix this in IE?

Answer 1

@Peter Meyer, Jim Robert

I tried different overflow values, to no avail.

Experimenting with different values for the wrap attribute and the word-wrap style also wasn't fruitful.

EDIT:

@dansays, seanb

Due to some awkward application-specific constraints, the width can only be applied to the table.

@travis

Setting style="word-break:break-all;" sort of worked! It still wraps differently in IE7 and FF. I'll accept this answer if nothing better comes up.

Answer 2

I've run into this problem before. It's related to how HTML parses table and cell widths.

You're fine setting 300 as a width as long as the contents of the element can never exceed that (setting a div with a definite width inside and an overflow rule is my favorite way).

But absent a solution like the above, the minute ANY element pushes you past that width, all bets are off. The element becomes as wide as it has to to accommodate the contents.

Additional tip - encase your width values in whatever set of quotes will nest the value properly (<table width='300'). If someone comes along and changes it to a %, it will ignore the %, otherwise.

Unfortunately, you're always going to have trouble breaking strings that do not have 'natural' breaks in IE, unless you can do something to break them up via code.

Answer 3

Another hacky option, but the only option that works for me - none of the other suggestions on this page do - is to wrap the textarea in a single cell table with a fixed table layout.

<table style="width:100%;table-layout:fixed"><tr><td>
<textarea style="width:100%">longstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstringlongstring</textarea>
</td></tr></table>

Answer 4

Another very hacky option, if you are stuck with a lot of constraints, but know what the surrounding dom will look like:

style="width:100%;width:expression(this.parentNode.parentNode.parentNode.parentNode.width +'px')"  

not pretty, but does work in IE7.
Using jquery or similar would be a much neater solution, but it depends on the other constraints you have.

Answer 5

or, how about:

overflow: scroll;

Edit:

I actually tested this. I think the behavior is such because the width is on the table, which I believe (I have nothing to back this up) I read long ago that the table width is a suggested width, but can be expanded to accommodate its content. Not sure. I know if you use a <DIV> rather than a table, it works. Additionally, if you apply the 300 pixel width to the containing <TD> element as opposed to the <TABLE> element, it works as well. Also, the overflow: scroll does nothing! :P

Nice, funky IE behavior, for sure!

Answer 6

Best thing I could find to make it work, a little hacky:
wrap textarea with <div style="width:300px; overflow:auto;"> might want to play around with the overflow value