Should I size a textarea with CSS width / height or HTML cols / rows attributes?

Question

Every time I develop a new form that includes a textarea I have the following dilemma when I need to specify its dimensions:

Use CSS or use the textarea's attributes cols and rows?

What are the pros and cons of each method?

What are the semantics of using these attributes?

How is it usually done?

Answer 1

I recommend to use both. Rows and cols are required and useful if the client does not support CSS. But as a designer I overwrite them to get exactly the size I wish.

The recommended way to do it is via an external stylesheet e.g.

textarea {    width: 300px;    height: 150px;  }

<textarea> </textarea>

Answer 2

textarea { height: auto; }

<textarea rows="10"></textarea>

This will trigger the browser to set the height of the textarea EXACTLY to the amount of rows plus the paddings around it. Setting the CSS height to an exact amount of pixels leaves arbitrary whitespaces.