Visual Text Formatting with Javascript
One thing that is disappointing -- to me at least -- with form fields is their utter lack of visual formatting. You have to resort to HTML or custom codes to do a simple thing like bolding text. In virtually all other applications a user sees, such a thing would be done by clicking a Bold button above the text field.
One way to solve this problem would be to embed a java applet for text input. This would require greater programming, but that's not the only problem. Java doesn't work all that well for a critical element: There are crashing problems, the load time can be annoying.
I would rather opt for Javascript instead. I've seen scripts that can trap keypresses as the user types them without a form field. And I've seen examples that can insert text into a webpage on the fly. Why not combine the two. With a little extra programming, the text formatting state can be set via clickable images. These images can insert HTML into the text area (probably just a blank table cell) instead of plain text.
Has anyone else come up with this idea before? Is it just not worth the effort?
One way to solve this problem would be to embed a java applet for text input. This would require greater programming, but that's not the only problem. Java doesn't work all that well for a critical element: There are crashing problems, the load time can be annoying.
I would rather opt for Javascript instead. I've seen scripts that can trap keypresses as the user types them without a form field. And I've seen examples that can insert text into a webpage on the fly. Why not combine the two. With a little extra programming, the text formatting state can be set via clickable images. These images can insert HTML into the text area (probably just a blank table cell) instead of plain text.
Has anyone else come up with this idea before? Is it just not worth the effort?
