Can You Use <textarea> Outside the Scope of a <form>

Question

I want to use the features and functionality that the <textarea> tag offers in browsers. I want to use it merely to hold a large block of information that can be viewed through the use of the scrollbars that come with the <textarea> tag.

So my question is can I use it without using <form></form> tags?

I want to be sure that I use it properly for contemporary and future browsers.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Following the standards the textarea element should be a descendant of a form element. HTML5 allows to place textarea outside the form but have a form attribute filled.

See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTML/HTML_Elements/textarea

But as I know you'll not get any errors in major browsers using textarea outside the form and without the form attribute.

For the purpose you've described in your question, you can just use a div element with vertical scrolling: http://jsfiddle.net/f0t0n/Ybznv/

#log {
    height: 256px;
    width: 512px;
    overflow: auto;
}

Answer 2

yes you can, but if its just scrolling use a div instead and style it like this in css:

example:

div {
overflow-x:scroll;
height:200px;
width:200px;
border:solid black 1px;
}

demo: http://jsbin.com/ugusos/2/edit