Disappearing statements in a textarea field

[crystalb24]

I'm trying to alter the appearence of my textarea fields. What I want is for a statement to be visible in the textarea until the user begins to type there.

Here is the code for the textarea field -

<input type='hidden' name='mission'>
<TEXTAREA ROWS="10" COLS="65" name="section2atextarea" class="style20"></textarea>

and the javascript I'm using to populate the textarea from the checkboxes listed below it -

<script language="JavaScript">
function updateTextarea(cb)
{
 var taValue = document.formName.section2atextarea.value;
 if(cb.checked)
 {
  if(taValue != "")
   taValue += " ";

  taValue += cb.value; //APPENDS checked value to textarea
 }//end if
 else //checkbox is not checked
 {
  if(taValue.indexOf(cb.value) > -1)
  {
   taValue = taValue.replace(cb.value, "");//removes UNchecked value once
  }//end if
 }//end else

 taValue = taValue.replace(/\s+/g, " "); //reduces multiple spaces to single spaces
 if(taValue.indexOf(" ") == 0)
  taValue = taValue.substring(1);
 document.formName.section2atextarea.value = taValue;
}//end function
</script>

What changes do I need to make?

~Crystal
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http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=7003325)

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[BillyRayPreachersSon]

This would be one for the Javascript forum, I'd say.

Hope this helps,
Dan

 

[BabyJeffy]

I don't quite know what all your code is about... but here is a very simple demonstration of what you have described:

<input name="username" type="text" value="Type your username here" onclick="if (this.value == 'Type your username here') this.value = '';" />

The text input shows a message ("Type your username here") and when the user clicks (or tabs) to edit, the text value is cleared.

Hope you can work from this.

Jeff