Can I embed HTML formatting inside of a <textarea> tag?

If I have a textarea block like so...

<textarea name="myTextArea" cols="100" rows="20" readonly=readonly>
.. text area content ...
</textarea>

How can I embed HTML formatted text inside this text block? If I can I had figured the following should work...

<textarea name="myTextArea" cols="100" rows="20" readonly=readonly>
<b>Hello how are you today?</b>
</textarea>

As an example. But that sentence does not show up as bold. Maybe I'm just trying to do something that can't be done?

Solution 1:

I am pretty sure the answer is no -- cannot do it with a textarea.

From the MDN docs:

The HTML <textarea> element represents a multi-line plain-text editing control.

• Permitted content Text

Solution 2:

Is not possible with

<textarea> 

Use this:

<div contenteditable="true">
</div>