how to align text in textarea in html

Question

I have a textarea and I am also writing some PHP code to prefill the textarea upon refresh. The "prefill" part is working fine.

My problem is when I start to type in the textarea, the text is not left aligned. It is starting at some random point in the textarea box. I want it left aligned like a normal text box.

Here is my code:

<TEXTAREA rows = 10 cols = 95 name = answer5>
<?php echo stripslashes(htmlentities($_POST['answer5'])); ?>
</TEXTAREA>

Answer 1

Trimming is not a best option to go with.

It will trim all the spaces which are even needed. I had the same problem and what I did was made all the code in a single line.

It depends on the spaces which you have in your text. My code was sometime like this before

<div class="controls">
<textarea name="about" class="span12" id="terms" rows="5">
<?php include('includes/terms.php');?>
</textarea>
</div>

Now output which I was getting was like this:

       Terms and Conditions

Point one
Point two
Point 3

Last Paragraph

// Here was huge space right at the bottom of textbox

So what is did was, modified my code this way:

<div class="controls"><textarea name="about" class="span12" id="terms" rows="5"><?php include('includes/terms.php');?></textarea></div>

Now everything is in single line and the spaces and new line entries which were there before are now gone. My text was printed like:

Terms and Conditions

Point one
Point two
Point 3

Last Paragraph

// Huge space is gone

You should also check the spaces which are there in the text contained in textarea element, apart from starting and ending points.