doubling the number of columns and rows in the post and comment textareas

January 5, 2006 5:49 AM

To improve usability, might I suggest doubling the number of columns and rows in the post and comment textareas? I promise to brush it and feed it twice a day, pretty please!
posted by Saucy Intruder to Feature Requests at 5:49 AM (32 comments total)

Another way to tackle the problem: use javascript to make it resizable with a two-way arrow on the bottom right corner or something.
posted by Firas at 6:12 AM on January 5, 2006

I use Resizeable Textarea for Firefox. (Updated for 1.5 by JWZ himself!)
posted by Plutor at 6:13 AM on January 5, 2006

Metafilthy will also increase the text input areas.
posted by Mitheral at 6:34 AM on January 5, 2006

A bookmarklet would be another simple solution:

<a href="javascript:var tx=document.getElementsByTagName('textarea')[0];tx.style.width='100%';tx.style.height='40em';void(0)">Enlarge Mefi Comment Box</a>
posted by nikzhowz at 6:45 AM on January 5, 2006

Plutor, that guy isn't JWZ.
posted by zsazsa at 7:06 AM on January 5, 2006

Please don't feed the verbose. The current text area encourages a shorter, pithier comment which I prefer over a bloated diatribe any day.
posted by caddis at 7:12 AM on January 5, 2006

Shit, you're right, he's a Mozilla guy. I knew I recognized the name, and I saw the first initial J and last initial Z and ran with it. I apologize to both Zawodny and Zawinski.
posted by Plutor at 7:13 AM on January 5, 2006

but your guinea pig got so hungry it ate the rabbit and you never clean the goldfish tank!
posted by andrew cooke at 7:39 AM on January 5, 2006

For the record, Jeremy Zawodny isn't a Mozilla guy either, except for having fixed up one extension there. He's a Yahoo! and MySQL guy.
posted by mendel at 7:58 AM on January 5, 2006

No. The textarea is already plenty big as it is.
posted by majick at 8:05 AM on January 5, 2006

make it a user option.
posted by delmoi at 8:16 AM on January 5, 2006

seconded on the user option vote.

also, delmoi, good posting in the ariel sharon thread, that :)
posted by By The Grace of God at 8:37 AM on January 5, 2006

Everything should be a preference! That's the secret of Linux's success.
posted by smackfu at 8:51 AM on January 5, 2006

smackfu: "Everything should be a preference! That's the secret of Linux's success."

That's the crux of KDE-vs-Gnome. KDE says "Make it an option". Gnome says "Only nerds want to do that, make them do it on the command line."

I am not picking a side.
posted by Plutor at 8:53 AM on January 5, 2006

Wait, metafilter has a command line now? Man, I miss all the good stuff.
posted by bonehead at 8:55 AM on January 5, 2006

gnome is not gnood.

kde is the place to be.

my $.02
posted by shmegegge at 9:01 AM on January 5, 2006

I had used the Resize Text Area extension, but MetaFilthy works well. I fail to comprehend how the size of a text area has any relation to the composition of a post.
posted by prostyle at 9:02 AM on January 5, 2006

maybe YOU don't HAVE to fill up the text box before clicking post, but some of us do. hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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posted by shmegegge at 9:07 AM on January 5, 2006

> ls
bad command or file name

posted by cortex at 9:07 AM on January 5, 2006

Plutor- just for the record (and to prevent future confusion), I'm not either of those people. In fact, I have nothing useful to contribute.
posted by JMOZ at 11:49 AM on January 5, 2006

If you want to keep it the same area, reduce its height and increase its width. I'm only partly tongue in cheek, there. The biggest problem I find with its current configuration is that pasting in some longer urls forces a horizontal scroll, which is a pain and might lead to more user errors.
posted by normy at 1:26 PM on January 5, 2006

I like normy's suggestion. Making a wider box would also make the look of the comment as you are writing it more consistent with look of the posted comments. Formatting would thus be a lot easier.
posted by oddman at 1:45 PM on January 5, 2006

The biggest problem I find with its current configuration is that pasting in some longer urls forces a horizontal scroll, which is a pain and might lead to more user errors.

Normy pretty much nailed it. For some reason textarea seems to be the only HTML feature that hasn't accomodated to user demands for accessibility. Given the growth of blogs and webmail, you'd think that this would have garnered more attention.

I'd throw in a plea for vertical extension too. Sometimes longer comments are necessary (some of the best Askme answers have been lengthy), and anything that does its best to mimic a notepad or word processor-style input would improve the quality of composition.

Maybe it's all psychological with me, but my paragraphs tend to become more cohesive when I am visually able to link them in context. (The live preview helps, however.)

The firefox extension is a nice find. Thanks Plutor.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 1:59 PM on January 5, 2006

Pony: text-boxes resized on a per-user basis to reflect the user's committee-assessed signal-to-noise ratio, general intelligence, and trends of success with pithy vs. wordsome comments.
posted by cortex at 2:02 PM on January 5, 2006

Example:

Posting as: Ethereal Bligh

posted by cortex at 2:04 PM on January 5, 2006

oddman writes "Formatting would thus be a lot easier."

Only if the reader has the same width window as the poster.
posted by Mitheral at 2:11 PM on January 5, 2006

So that's why my text area is so big.
posted by Eideteker at 2:26 PM on January 5, 2006

Also, it's interesting that the "Check Spelling" link was superimposed over that textarea. I didn't do that.

And it actually works for the box, too! Ha!
posted by cortex at 3:40 PM on January 5, 2006

Oh yeses! "Oh noes" passes spellcheck!

"Spellcheck", ironically, does not.
posted by arto at 5:07 PM on January 5, 2006

cortex FTW
posted by shmegegge at 6:43 PM on January 5, 2006

cortex made me laugh. Gold star!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:02 AM on January 6, 2006

JMOZ: "Plutor- just for the record (and to prevent future confusion), I'm not either of those people. In fact, I have nothing useful to contribute."

Yeah, thanks for the heads up. I didn't do too well yesterday with my correctness ratio.

I could get behind cortex's suggestion.
posted by Plutor at 3:11 AM on January 6, 2006