Use a textarea when you want

Jack Michaelson — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 15:06:45 +0000

Use a textarea when you want the users to make edits to the code. If that's not necessary I'd suggest just put it in a block element.

If you mean a textarea,

webwiz — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:06:13 +0000

If you mean a textarea, well, the same issues apply. You still need to use < etc. even when displaying in a textarea.

Thanks guys, would I be

caffinephil — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:46:01 +0000

Thanks guys, would I be better using a text box or is that a no no?

Jack Michaelson raises an

webwiz — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 04:33:57 +0000

Jack Michaelson raises an interesting point.

All "latin" encodings (ISO-8859-?), as well as UTF-8 share the same characters in the first 127 places, so no entities are needed to display them when using the usual 8-bit editors most of us employ. For displaying European accented characters in the 192-255 character range, the named entities are preferred and have worked since HTML 2.0. Entities in the range 160-191 are newer, and it is in respect of these that you may have read the caution, as the numbered version always works.

Eight bit encoding is limited to 256 characters (0-255), but Unicode supports a far bigger range than this, which is why you see entities like &8220; for example. I prefer to use an editor and an FTP client that supports UTF-8. Oh, and you need your server to send the appropriate header. This way you can enter every character "natively" which makes text far easier to read, especially if, like me, you like typographic niceties like "curly quotes." But that's just me.

To get back to the original question - < > " and & are part of both the HTML and XML languages, so are preferred for marking up code.

Sorry about the long post, but character encoding seems to be one of the least understood aspects of making web pages.

Greg K wrote: actually, use

Jack Michaelson — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:41:50 +0000

Greg K wrote: actually, use the the following:

< (less than, the left angle bracket)
> (greater than, the right angle bracket)

-Greg

I remember using the decimals in stead of the entity reference has better chances (as in 100% compared to 99% or so) to work.
I can't remember where I've read that of course , anyone?

To the above, add "&" to

webwiz — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:43:56 +0000

To the above, add "&" to replace any ampersand (&).

actually, use the the

Greg K — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 16:19:11 +0000

actually, use the the following:

< (less than, the left angle bracket)
> (greater than, the right angle bracket)

-Greg

yep, there is. In stead of

Jack Michaelson — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:33:15 +0000

yep, there is. In stead of typing
'<tag>', you type '& #60;tag& #62;', without the spaces