Text Area (deprecated)

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This topic only applies to BAW, and is located in the BAW repository. Last updated on 2025-03-13 12:15
Text Area creates a text area field that can have multiple lines of text. It can be configured to display plain text or rich text.

Restrictions and limitations

Important: A Text Area instance expands to occupy the bounding box that is defined in its Positioning properties. For example, if you set the width and height fields in the Positioning properties to 200px, the text area expands to occupy that amount of area. However, in Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 (deprecated), the text area expands only to a maximum default height. The width is not affected by this restriction and the text area occupies the specified width. Other browsers do not have this restriction and the text area expands to the specified height and width.

The Text Area view has a minimum height of 4em, which for the default font is 56px without the label and 77px with the label. In the positioning properties, setting the minimum height to less than these values visually truncates the Text Area instance to make it look partially hidden. If you change the size of the default font in the theme, you change the truncation threshold accordingly.

Data binding

Set the data binding for the view in the General properties tab.
Table 1. Data binding for Text Area
Binding description Data type
The bound data item contains a String value that the view displays. The String can initially be empty. If the visibility of the view is not read only, the view saves to the bound data item any String that the user enters into it. String

Theme definitions

The design mode of the theme editor contains a simulation of this view. If you hover over the simulation, it lists the theme definitions that determine the appearance of the view. For information on the theme editor, see Creating themes.

Configuration properties

Set or modify view configuration in the Configuration properties tab.
Table 2. Configuration properties for Text Area
Configuration property Description Data type
Placeholder hint Add a brief description or example of the input required by the user. If the bound data item does not contain a value, users see the hint until they type in the field. String
Text area typescreen sizes icon Specify whether the text area has plain or rich text. The default value is Plain Text.

If you select Rich Text, a palette for rich-text editing provides content-authoring views for standard text formatting, link editing, insertion of graphics, and so on.

 TextAreaType
Disable HTML encoding Select to display the bound data without using HTML encoding. Boolean