jquery - The .val() of a textarea doesn't take new lines into account

Question

The .val() property of an item in jQuery for a <textarea> doesn't seem to work with new lines. I need this function as the text-area is meant to recognize the enter key and display it as a preview, with the new line in tact.

However, what happens is shown in this fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/GbjTy/1/. The text is displayed, but not in a new line.

How can I achieve the preview to include new lines, and I know it is possible, because it does this in the Stack Overflow Post Question preview.

Thanks.

P.S I have seen other links on SO relating to this, but they all say get the End User to use some code, which is not an ideal method for me. How can I achieve this without the End User writing any specific code, like here on SO Question Preview, where the Enter works as it should in the preview.

Answer 1

It's a CSS problem, not a JavaScript problem. HTML collapses white space by default — this includes ignoring newlines.

Add white-space: pre-wrap to the output div. http://jsfiddle.net/mattball/5wdzH/

This is supported in all modern browsers: https://caniuse.com/#feat=css3-tabsize