jQuery.text() doesn't work with textarea elements

Question

Any reason why jQuery('textarea').text() always returns default value instead of current text when the text area actually has some text and jQuery('textarea')[0].value does return the text? Take a look at the simple example to see the problem.

Answer 1

Entering a value in an input element (textarea being one of them) doesn't change the markup. text() only grabs the text content of the markup. You should use val() instead:

jQuery('textarea').val()