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

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.

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

The forced new lines in textareas are \ns, other HTML tags than textarea will ignore these. You have to use <br /> to force new lines at those elements.

I suggest you use JavaScript to fix that rather than CSS as you already rely on JavaScript.

$( "#watched_textarea" ).keyup( function() {
   $( "#output_div" ).html( $( this ).val().replace(/\n/g, '<br />') );
}); 

You can find the updated version here: http://jsfiddle.net/GbjTy/2/

Try something like this:

$( "#watched_textarea" ).keyup( function() {
   $( "#output_div" ).html( $( this ).val().replace('\n', '<br/>') );
}); 

In HTML, whitespace gets ignored by default.

You could also change your <div> tag into a <pre> tag:

<pre id="output_div"></pre>

And that would work as well.