Text Area is Ugly

[dspires]

Sure. Get rid of the textarea tag and just use the [FMP-field: Answer] data element. This will display the data, but it will no longer be a form element and can't be edited. If editing is required, a button could load a web page for editing - with the textarea tag.

[drdigital9]

I tried that, and the data flys off the screen if the data is entered without line breaks or <br> So there needs to be some sort of way to wrap text within the table for this to work without <textarea>

I have noticed that the <textarea> tag works just fine inside of Netscape, however within Explorer is displays the ugly white text field boxes.

Thanks for the input

[dspires]

Format your page, or data display area in a table.

<table width=100%>

<tr>

<td>

[FMP-field: Answer]

</td>

</tr>

</table>

You can also set up your database / CDML to allow formatting submitted via the web (returns / spaces) to be kept. I posted comments on doing this a while back (http://www.fmforums.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=22&t=000352).

[ July 03, 2001: Message edited by: dspires ]

[drdigital9]

I really appreciate the help, but for whatever reason I simply cannot get my text to wrap inside of my template file once on the web. I have even tried your fix from a while ago:

******

For the text to display on the web, create a calculation field. If the comment field is 'comment', create one called 'comment_html', for instance. It should be a calculation set to: Substitute(comment, "***new paragraph symbol***", "<br>"). In your CDML, the tag will look like: [FMP-field: comment_html, Raw].

****

I think part of the problem is, what if the user who filled in the record via the web, didn't use any returns at all? They filled in the record by just typing non-stop and then submitted. I need the text to then display with returns that fit the template page.

[Anatoli]

Normally the text is always wrapping in HTML tables, unless you are using NOWRAP attribute.

[drdigital9]

Anatoli,

My text seems to fly off the page for whatever reason.

Link:

http://[email protected]/voh/FMPro?-db=voh.fp5&-format=results.html&-max=10&-findall=

[Keith M. Davie]

You need authorization to perform a -findall at that link. Wow.

[drdigital9]

Sorry about that, try:

http://password:[email protected]/voh/FMPro?-db=voh.fp5&-format=results.html&-max=10&-findall=

[ July 03, 2001: Message edited by: drdigital9 ]

[ July 03, 2001: Message edited by: drdigital9 ]

[ July 03, 2001: Message edited by: drdigital9 ]

[drdigital9]

Is there a better way to display the results of a database without using the <textarea> tag? On one hand I need the <textarea> tag, because it wraps the text so it doesn't fly off the screen. On the other hand, it is quite ugly and sooooo 1995.

I just want the results of [FMP-field: Answer] to show in a regular table, and still wrap accordingly if the entry is too long.

There has to be a way to do this. Anybody?

Thanks

[Anatoli]

Dead.

Not even ping to the 128.97.77.208

[scratchmalogicalwax]

If you specify the table width in pixels the text should wrap predictably in your web page.

Anecdote:

When I was first developing my companies' web product suite I had a similar problem.....I went round and round in circles before I realised that the text I was using was a continuous string with no spaces! DOH!

NB. Anatoli et al, Lasso has the EncodeBreak key word eg [Field: 'FieldName', EncodeBreak] which replaces all the paragraph characters in FMPro fields with <br> is there something similar for CDML? it could be useful here.

[drdigital9]

Hello to those have posted to this thread.

My link was dead, because the server went down over the 4th holiday.

Anyway, I have tried the resize by pixel thing (which does work in most cases) but not this one.

The Filemaker entry has no breaks, so for whatever reason the html page doesn't want to wrap them automatically.

Any other ideas?

[dspires]

The web browser should wrap normal text alright. What kind of entries are you planning for? I wouldn't think that you will normally see entries without spaces like your (no space when submitted) example:

"kjhdsgfjkhgdsakjhfgakdsjhgfhjdsgfkjhsdgakjfhgdsahjfkdjhsfgjkhdsgfhdskfjgdshjfgdksjhfgkdsjgfkjhdsgfkjadhsgfkjsdhgfkjdhsgfkjhdsgfkjhdsgfkjhsdkjhfgkdsajhgfkjhdsgfkjhgdskfjhgdskjhfgds akjhfgkjdhsgfkhjdsgfjkhsadgfkjhgdsakjfhgdasjkhfgkhjsdagfkjhgdskfjhgdskfjhgdsfkjhgdsjkghfdhsgfhjksadgfkjhasdghfjkgdskjhfgsdkajhfgadskhjfgdksjhfgdsajkhgkgfjh" example.

For this forum it looks like there is a return (break) inserted if a single string excedes as specified length. You could look at doing something like that with FMP.

[ July 05, 2001: Message edited by: dspires ]

[drdigital9]

Thanks to all have put their two cents worth on this thread. Here is what I have come up with.

The text wrap issue, only seems to occur when there is one long string of text with no spaces or returns at all. Seeing as this rarely occurs in the real world, I will just live with it.

Everything seems to wrap just fine, when the user just types the entry in normally with spaces and returns.

It also seems to work fine if it is copied and pasted into the entry, as long as it is not just one long string of text.

I am taking the other link down for now to work on this some more, but I have saved an example of my findings at the following url.

http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/web/other/bad_text.html

Again, thanks for all the help!

[Keith M. Davie]

Thanks for leaving the example.