HTMLarea Lite (Tag Review)

Iautomated has released a new ColdFusion custom tag called HTMLarea lite which replaces the HTML <TEXTAREA> tag. The tag makes it easy for your website users to use HTML formatting in their text. Although the idea isn't new, the price for this tag is FREE. HTMLarea Lite is a scaled back version of HTMLarea. The lite version allows you to cut formatted text from Microsoft Office products and paste them right into your web-based form. You can then use keyboard shortcuts (Such as Control-B for BOLD) to add further formatting to the text. With the lite version, you can VIEW the HTML source at any time but not edit it. The lite version does not include a tool-bar with the typical formatting icons. However, both of these features are available in the commercial version of the tag.

Installation is very simple. Just copy the custom tag into your custom tags directory and place a folder of widgets into a web-accessible directory. Iautomated also includes a tutorial to get you up and running, that will even help you test and diagnose your installation of the product. This makes it a breeze to get going.

To use HTMLarea Lite in a <Form>, just do two things:

1. Replace your opening FORM tag with their tag--i.e.,

   <CF_HTMLAREA_LITE MODE="FORM" ACTION="testform.cfm" METHOD="POST" NAME="mytest" INCPATH="http://your_inc_path_here">

2. Then replace any TEXTAREA tags with a similar statement, to the one above, but just use EDITOR for the mode, i.e. Mode="Editor".

All in all, this tag is an excellent addition to any ColdFusion developer's bag of tricks. Use it in place of your TEXTarea tags, anywhere you need to add a friendly option for non-HTML-abled people.

For more information visit the Allaire Tag gallery or http://www.iautomated.com/. On the Iautomated.com site, you'll find working demonstrations of both free and commercial versions of the tags and more information about how to set it up!

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