textarea input only shows when it's the focus field

Text that is typed into my textarea embedded in my website only appears when that field is the focus field. It looks blank when you are typing in another field.  This confuses users.  How do I fix this so once entered, it continues to appear even when working on another field on form?

Hi,

In the options for your Text area, if you change the editor mode from "Rich Text" to "Plain Text" you should be able to see the text entered once again:

If this still does not work for you, let us know and we will be happy to have another look.

I tried this on my computer (without installing it on my website) and it still does not work.  The second some other field besides the textarea is the focus, you no longer see the text entered there.

It appears to work on IE, but not Chrome.

Here is my test form with the changes made:

http://form.jotformpro.com/form/50354780028958

As far as I can tell, with the changes made, the text shows in the field no matter what is selected within the form:

Are you having different results?  Let us know and we will be happy to have another look.

It appears to work on IE, but not Chrome or Firefox

My cloned version of your form appears to be working in all browsers.  The screenshot in my above post was taken from Chrome.  I checked your form and it looks as though your text area is still set to "Rich Text".

After you make the change, let us know and we will be happy to have another look.

I changed the Editor to plain text and reinstalled the code on my website.  The field is still rich text (in Chrome and Firefox, but not IE) even though the richtext = "yes" is gone from the form code.  Is there a way to explicitly specify plain text in the code?

I checked your page again and it appears as though you have used the source code embed method.  Changes made to your form are not update when using this method.  Each time you make any changes, if you want the embedded for to be updated, you would need to embed the new source code with the changes made.

Set the field to "Plain Text" then embed the source code of your form and you should be all set.

Let us know if you have any further questions and we will be happy to help.

Thanks David.  If I understand you correctly, you're saying I have to embed the full new source code (not just the link) into my web page code each time I make a change.  That is what I am doing.  Please look at the source code on the website for the field in question and tell me if the code is wrong or doesn't match the code on jotform.  http://www.madsails.com/contact.html

It seems that the rich text editor code is still on your web page.

Please try to replace the form code on your website with a fresh version.

Alternatively, you can try injecting the following CSS to form styles to see if that helps with the text that does not appear.

.nicEdit-main {
color: black;
}

Thank you.

Will someone please do as I asked in my previous response?

I realize the form field is still appearing as a Rich text field (but NOT in IE!!!). I have replaced the form code many times and I have no reason to believe that I have a problem with font color not being black. If the code works in IE and the code is the same in both IE and Chrome, something else is going on.

Thank you.

Hi,

Upon checking your website, it seems that the problem is using the actual form's full source code. It is quite common to have incompatibility issues on browsers especially standards on web development are being updated. Also, development and support on Internet Explorer will be discontinued by Microsoft as they will have a new browser named "Spartan". You can check it here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2863878/microsofts-reported-spartan-browser-will-be-lighter-more-flexible-than-internet-explorer.html.

For your question, may I know why you would like to use the form's full source code? I would recommend that you use the default embed code or the iFrame code. This is what we usually advise, default code will let you update your form in the form builder and you don't need to re-embed it on your website to see the changes, while the iFrame code offers the same advantage at the same time it prevents other CSS styling and Javascript codes to conflict with the ones you have in your website.

Here's how I viewed your website.

1. In Google Chrome, I entered a text.

2. Hovered away and the text seems to be gone.

3. When you highlight the text and change the font color.

4. Then you hovered away, you'll see that the font is now display. With this in mind, it seems that the default color of the font is white.

5. I then viewed it on IE and the rich text editor is not anymore available.

6. When you check your Form's direct URL which is this one: http://www.jotform.us/form/42908596319164. You'll see that there's no rich editor display in all browsers. With this, it seems that a script code was left in your website that you might have missed. It might be in your <head> tag or at the bottom of your page. I would recommend searching a keyword "form" or "jotform" to see if you left a code similar to this. 

You can check this guide on what embed form code to use: http://www.jotform.com/help/67-Which-Form-Embed-Code-Should-I-Use. But I would recommend using the default or the iFrame code for this.

I hope this helps.

Thank you.

I replaced the full code with the embed code and it worked.  I don't understand why, but I'm happy to have resolved this issue.  Thanks for your help.  This forum is a wonderful resource.

You're welcome and thank you for the kind words. I'm glad that everything is working in your end. 

If you need any assistance again or have other concerns, please do not hesitate to open up a new thread here in the forum.

Thank you.