Question

I’ve got a DIV which has contentEditable=true so the user can edit it. The problem is that it doesn’t look like a text field, so it may not be clear to the user that it can be edited.

Is there a way that I can style the DIV so that it appears to the user like a text input field?

Answer 1

These look the same as their real counterparts in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. They degrade gracefully and look OK in Opera and IE9, too.

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/ThinkingStiff/AbKTQ/

CSS:

textarea {
    height: 28px;
    width: 400px;
}

#textarea {
    -moz-appearance: textfield-multiline;
    -webkit-appearance: textarea;
    border: 1px solid gray;
    font: medium -moz-fixed;
    font: -webkit-small-control;
    height: 28px;
    overflow: auto;
    padding: 2px;
    resize: both;
    width: 400px;
}

input {
    margin-top: 5px;
    width: 400px;
}

#input {
    -moz-appearance: textfield;
    -webkit-appearance: textfield;
    background-color: white;
    background-color: -moz-field;
    border: 1px solid darkgray;
    box-shadow: 1px 1px 1px 0 lightgray inset;  
    font: -moz-field;
    font: -webkit-small-control;
    margin-top: 5px;
    padding: 2px 3px;
    width: 398px;    
}

HTML:

<textarea>I am a textarea</textarea>
<div id="textarea" contenteditable>I look like textarea</div>

<input value="I am an input" />
<div id="input" contenteditable>I look like an input</div>

Output: