Text Box Formatting Big Problem – No Automatic Return

If you don’t put a space in, that’s what happens with every html textarea I’ve ever used. I went to your comment form and typed

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

and the same thing happened as happens right here on the forum: a horizontal scroll bar appeared. But once I hit space, it wrapped around.

I guess you want it to be like MS Word, which will force a line wrap even if there’s not a space. I’m not sure how to accomplish that without some fancy javascripting, though.

Is this a serious problem in your case, or just an annoyance?

Yes, If I hit space, it wraps around. That’s a pain in the butt for me, but ok if I have to do it. But it also means anyone leaving a comment can screw up my site

There’s two different issues here. The first is how it looks in the comment form, the second is how it looks after submitted. Now it sounds like you mean the second issue. Is that what you’re asking about?

To resolve the latter issue, add this to the end of your stylesheet:

.entry,.comment{overflow:auto;}

Well, I guess I’m asking about both.
I do a lot of writing and of course having to hit space at the end of each line is an inconvenience, but at least I can control it.

As for the comment box…if someone goes on my site and leaves a comment without hitting space at the end of each line – intentionally or not – when posted the text spills over into the sidebar and runs off the page. In IE, it pushes the sidebars to the bottom of the page.

I’ve gone to other people’s sites and tested this out in their comments text box and their text always auto returns at the end of a line.

No, it didn’t work. Maybe I put it in the wrong place.
I’m wondering if it’s a tinymce problem (I tried using the Advanced Tinymce plugin a while ago, didn’t like it, unistalled it and reloaded the backup files).

I also keep seeing the topic of “word wrap” here in the forums, but haven’t seen a solution yet.

TinyMCE only affects the post editor, not the comments form.

Not sure what you mean by “it didn’t work.” That CSS won’t affect the commenting form, it will affect comments like the test comment I posted at your site. It will cause scroll bars to appear when necessary, much like there should be a scroll box below this post right here, because of this:

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Ok,
I put it back, and yes, when putting in an extra long comment there is now a scroll bar.

Maybe I’m not getting this. I seems to me that there should be a way to automatically add a line of code or change some parameters (if that’s the correct term) to make the line of text automatically “break” or “wrap”

While writing this, I went and checked out some random WP blogs from the “Show Off Your WP” forum and I see that when leaving a comment, they do the same thing. I did find one yesterday that did what I wanted, but could not re-locate it today. I do feel a little better now though.

So, what do you think? Is there a way to overcome this?
Is there a text editor plugin that will help me when writing? A comments plugin?

Oh, and thanks for taking the time and having the patience to help me with this. I’m still learning WP, code ect. and though I’ve learned a lot in the past couple of months, I still have a ways to go.

Try typing in this text box. This is what I’m trying for.
Here

SO, I went over to my WP.com account and I find it does the exact same thing. I guess I justed wasted three days trying to figure out a “non-problem”
But, if you Adam, or anyone else, has any ideas, I’d really like to hear them.

Hey Adam,

OK…I got it, finally. I now understand what you were talking about. Being new to this, it takes me a few minutes (hours).

When I or someone leaving a comment post normally, everything is fine. Seems WP understands to drop to the next line as long as you are typing words or characters with spaces every so often. But, if someone types a long string of letters or characters, it just continues on. Hopefully no one will do that, but if they do, I inserted the code you gave me and it works great! (except in IE 6.0) Thank you so much. That will provide a nice safeguard in case anyone tries to do what I did.

So, thanks again and have a great day.