How can I make a TextArea 100% width without overflowing when padding is present in CSS?

Why not forget the hacks and just do it with CSS?

One I use frequently:

.boxsizingBorder {
    -webkit-box-sizing: border-box;
       -moz-box-sizing: border-box;
            box-sizing: border-box;
}

See browser support here.


The answer to many CSS formatting problems seems to be "add another <div>!"

So, in that spirit, have you tried adding a wrapper div to which the border/padding are applied and then putting the 100% width textarea inside of that? Something like (untested):

textarea
{
  width:100%;
}
.textwrapper
{
  border:1px solid #999999;
  margin:5px 0;
  padding:3px;
}
<div style="display: block;" id="rulesformitem" class="formitem">
  <label for="rules" id="ruleslabel">Rules:</label>
  <div class="textwrapper"><textarea cols="2" rows="10" id="rules"/></div>
</div>


let's consider the final output rendered to the user of what we want to achieve: a padded textarea with both a border and a padding, which characteristics are that being clicked they pass the focus to our textarea, and the advantage of an automatic 100% width typical of block elements.

The best approach in my opinion is to use low level solutions as far as possible, to reach the maximum browsers support. In this case the only HTML could work fine, avoiding the use of Javascript (which anyhow we all love).

The LABEL tag comes in our help because has such behaviour and is allowed to contain the input elements it must address to. Its default style is the one of inline elements, so, giving to the label a block display style we can avail ourselves of the automatic 100% width including padding and borders, while the inner textarea has no border, no padding and a 100% width.

Taking a look at the W3C specifics other advantages we may notice are:

  • no "for" attribute is needed: when a LABEL tag contains the target input, it automatically focuses the child input when clicked;
  • if an external label for the textarea has already been designed, no conflicts occur, since a given input may have one or more labels.

See W3C specifics for more detailed information.

Simple example:

.container { 
  width: 400px; 
  border: 3px 
  solid #f7c; 
  }
.textareaContainer {
	display: block;
	border: 3px solid #38c;
	padding: 10px;
  }
textarea { 
  width: 100%; 
  margin: 0; 
  padding: 0; 
  border-width: 0; 
  }
<body>
<div class="container">
	I am the container
	<label class="textareaContainer">
		<textarea name="text">I am the padded textarea with a styled border...</textarea>
	</label>
</div>
</body>

The padding and border of the .textareaContainer elements are the ones we want to give to the textarea. Try editing them to style it as you want. I gave large and visible padding and borders to the .textareaContainer element to let you see their behaviour when clicked.

Tags:

Html

Css

Stylesheet

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