<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Sample Textarea</title>
<style type="text/css">
* {width:100%; height:100%; margin:0; border:0; padding:0; background:#D3D3D3;}
textarea {overflow:auto; box-sizing:border-box; -moz-box-sizing:border-box; padding:6px;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<form action="#">
<textarea rows="1" cols="1">This is some text.</textarea>
</form>
</body>
</html>
I used the box-sizing property to set the textarea width to 100% plus some padding and it works in all major browsers. However, in Firefox if you add more content to the textarea, you’ll see unwanted padding around the scrollbar.
The only properties you want to supply universally are margins and padding only and even then its debatable as it affects some form controls detrimentally.
Ah ok it’s a long standing bug in Firefox with no solution at present I’m afraid. I couldn’t see any workarounds other than not applying right padding (but you still get the gap at the top and bottom). Maybe use a taller line height and just use left padding.