Textarea++ Gives Firefox Users Control Over Textareas On Websites

Update: Mozilla has integrated basic textarea resizing in Firefox 4. This means that you don't have to install an extension anymore for that.

Do you know a website that you like to participate on, e.g. a forum or a blog, only to be turned down by an abysmal small comment form textarea?

Maybe one that is good for a small sentence which essentially means that it will only show a few lines of the text you have written so far so that it becomes highly annoying to continue writing and edit text?

If you want to check your comment or post you need to go back and forth with the cursor keys as textareas usually do not come with scrollbars.

Back in 2008 we reviewed a Firefox add-on called Text Area Resizer & Mover which did a great job of resizing textareas. Not only the ones that were too small but also the ones that were to big. It was even possible to move the textarea but this often caused problems with the site layout.

Textarea++ is a new experimental add-on for the Firefox web browser that offers a similar functionality except for moving textareas on the screen.

It has a few aces up its sleeve though making it interesting enough to justify a review. Textareas can be resized by simply moving the mouse cursor to the lower right corner. The textarea can then be increased or decreased in size. The developer claims that it works with all textareas even those that are loaded dynamically and we have not found a textarea during our tests that would make that claim invalid.

Another interesting option is the addition of a scrollbar for textareas where more text than the visible limit can handle has been entered. This scrollbar is added even if scrollbar functionality has been locked by the webmaster.

Textarea++ is an interesting add-on for users who regularly post on websites that offer an improper textarea for that task. Users who prefer a bookmarklet find the Form Text Resizer bookmarklet at The Man In Blue page. And there are also quite a few userscripts, for example that by Julien Couvreur that provide a similar functionality.

Update: Textarea++ has been discontinued. Firefox users can instead install the Resizable Textarea add-on.

Update: Resizable Textarea has been discontinued because of Mozilla's integration of the feature directly in Firefox.

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