The <textarea> tag is a special input element of forms that can be tricky to use well.
<textarea></textarea>
The textarea tag creates a multiple lined text input field in your reader's browser. It allows the reader to type in nearly unlimited lines of text. When the form is submitted, these lines are sent to the server as the value of the name of the textarea. If your reader hits enter in the field, it is sent to the server as (CR/LF). The textarea tag must always be followed by the closing </textarea> tag.
This tag has several commonly used attributes:
cols
The cols attribute indicates how many columns wide the textarea should be.
rows
The rows attribute defines how many rows down the textarea should be.
Both cols and rows are required in valid HTML 4 (and XHTML 1), and in order to keep your layout I strongly recommend that you set them. You will find that your readers will not want to type more than there is space available (even though there are scroll bars to include additional text), so this is a good way to limit the text submitted by a small amount.
You can also use style tags on textarea boxes with the style and class attributes. And JavaScript uses the event handlers: onfocus, onblur, onchange, and onselect. You use these attributes as you would use them in any other HTML tag.
Part 4 of the HTML Forms Tutorial: The Select Tag and the Option Tag
These tags create drop-down menus or select menus for your customers to choose pre-determined options.
