Textarea Widget Outputs Default cols & rows, overriding styles provided by CSS

[Timothy Allen]

The default Textarea class in widgets.py has default attributes passed along to the HTML:

default_attrs = {'cols': '40', 'rows': '10'}

Since CSS is used for most styling across the web today, this seems like a step backwards. Is there any reason not to remove these defaults?

[Timothy Allen]

In regards to the comment in the source:

# The 'rows' and 'cols' attributes are required for HTML correctness.

The rows and cols attributes in HTML are not required; in fact, if omitted, HTML defaults to 2 rows and 20 cols. Reference:

​http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_textarea_cols.asp
​http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_textarea_rows.asp

[Aymeric Augustin]

Replying to FlipperPA:

Is there any reason not to remove these defaults?

At least backwards-compatibility. Now you can argue about whether it's a good reason :)

[Timothy Allen]

Replying to aaugustin:

Replying to FlipperPA:

Is there any reason not to remove these defaults?

At least backwards-compatibility. Now you can argue about whether it's a good reason :)

Textareas will still appear in any browser I know of regardless of providing rows and cols due to the HTML defaults. But point taken! :)

[Claude Paroz]

Hasn't the CSS precedence over cols and rows attributes? If yes, then I don't see the point in removing them.

[afuna]

CSS will take precedence over the HTML attributes, so the textarea size should be pretty easy to override.

(In addition the django defaults seem like a good idea, because the HTML defaults result in a *tiny* barely-usable textarea).

[Aymeric Augustin]

Then all we need is to change the comment to something like "use slightly better defaults than HTML's 20x2 box".

I would support even more reasonable defaults, like 72x6, but that could break layouts relying on the current default size.

[Claude Paroz <claude@…>]

In 9f76d0d351953b513e9cd4e2fbd7690077a65fae:

Fixed #22136 -- Updated comment for Textarea widget

Thanks Aymeric Augustin for the suggestion.