Question

Do the WebKit and Microsoft browsers support any method of specifying tab width like Firefox and Opera do using their -moz-tab-size and -o-tab-size properties?

For example, I want the tabs in my <textarea> to have a width of 4 spaces:

textarea {
    -moz-tab-size: 4;
    -o-tab-size: 4;
    /* How would I do this in Chrome, Safari, and IE? */
}

[Update:]

I created a tab-size polyfill (Demo):

<script> // tab-size polyfill
var codeElements = document.getElementsByTagName('code'), // Applies to all code elements. Adjust to your needs.
codeElementCount = codeElements.length,
e = d.createElement('i');

if(e.style.tabSize !== '' && e.style.mozTabSize !== '' && e.style.oTabSize !== '') {
    for(var i = 0; i < codeElementCount; i++) {
        codeElements[i].innerHTML = codeElements[i].innerHTML.replace(/\t/g,'<span class="tab">&#9;</span>');
    }
}
</script>

<style>
.tab {
    width: 2.5em; /* adjust to your needs */
    display: inline-block;
    overflow: hidden;
}
</style>

Note: This wont work on <textarea>s, but only on element’s that can contain other elements. If the browser does support tab-size it’ll use that instead.

Answer 1

tab-size is currently only implemented by Firefox and Opera using your given vendor prefixes.

For WebKit, there’s a bug report requesting that the property be implemented. I believe work has already started on it, as can be seen in the comments on that report.

For IE, well, I can’t find anything about an -ms-tab-size or tab-size implementation in IE9 or IE10. I suppose the IE team has been none the wiser.