Tips for customizing the blinking cursor in a textarea

I am experimenting with creating a unique effect on my website. I have incorporated a textarea with transparent text overlaying a pre element that displays the typed text dynamically using JavaScript. This creates an illusion of the user typing in real-time, similar to the background color feature showcased on the Regex Tester tool located at this link. However, while I aim to modify the text and background colors for this effect, I encounter an issue with the transparency affecting the blinking cursor within the textarea, resulting in a visually disorienting experience.

Is there a solution that would allow me to change the color of the blinking cursor separately from the text itself? Alternatively, is it possible to adjust only the text color without impacting the appearance of the blinking cursor?

Despite searching for answers across various platforms, I have yet to find a satisfactory solution to this predicament.

It is important to note that in this context, I am specifically referring to the blinking caret or cursor within the textarea box upon clicking, rather than the movement of the mouse cursor on the screen.

javascriptjqueryhtmlcsstextarea

Answer №1

An effective solution is to use a monospaced font such as Courier or Courier New when dealing with textareas. Instead of setting the textarea's color to transparent, on keyDown event, populate it with spaces rather than other characters:

on keyDown ↓
retrieve the character ↓
insert it into the underlying <pre> tag ↓
add a space in the textarea

To determine the caret position for placing the space and character correctly, there are existing scripts available (like this one).

If needed, I can provide a demonstration using Fiddle or Plunkr.

It becomes more challenging if a non-monospaced font is used, but since a <pre> tag is employed, this method should suffice. For those interested, I am willing to explain an alternative approach for non-monospaced fonts, although it is complex, time-consuming, and not compatible with Internet Explorer.

UPDATE: An additional strategy involves obtaining the caret position from the transparent textarea and positioning a 1px-wide black div accordingly (for non-monospaced fonts). This div can be animated using CSS or JavaScript to create a blinking effect.

Answer №2

Experiment with the caret-color CSS property

Check out the documentation here on w3schools - caret color

input {
  caret-color: blue;
}
<input></input>

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