How to improve the textarea element?

I'm building a small plug-in that has a text editor to edit HTML and CSS code. My problem is that when开发者_JAVA百科 trying to edit the HTML and CSS code from the text area element, I found out that it's not convenient.

For example, the tab button jumps you to the next element instead of inserting a tab. I'm looking for a lightweight script to improve the textarea element. Any ideas?

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Unless you are trying to build your own because you

1. need specific, custom functionality or
2. want to teach yourself how to do it

you should consider something like

http://www.tinymce.com/

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I've used this in the past. Works well for tabs.

http://teddevito.com/demos/textarea.html

Beyond that, TinyMCE is fairly standard for more rich-text situations.