blank spaces in text fields in form

[kb'sbuddy]

I am a newbie. I have a simple form with just a few fields. A user fills out
the form, goes to another page to preview his/her entries, and then may choose
to return to the form and make changes in those fields. I use session variables
to do this. So I want the form to be filled with the session variable data when
a user returns but be completely blank upon first entry to the page. That part
works OK. But I'm getting lots of blank spaces in all my text fields when you
first enter the page, and even more added when you return to the form after
filling it out the first time. Here's my code for one sample field in the
form... all have similar code: Please enter your personal message<br>
<textarea name='txtMessage' cols='65' rows='2' id='txtMessage'> <cflock
scope='Session' timeout='10' type='readOnly'> <cfif
IsDefined('session.sessMessage')><cfoutput>#Sessio n.sessMessage#</cfoutput></cfi
f> <cfif Not IsDefined('session.sessMessage')><cfset session.sessMessage =
''></cfif></cflock></textarea> I've tried using Trim but that seems to make no
difference. Thanks in advance for anyone's help!

[jdeline]

Note that everything between the ">" at the end of the first line and
</textarea> becomes fair game to pre-populate your textarea box. To get rid of
those spaces, try the code below.



<!--- leave NO spaces between your ColdFusion tags. spaces WITHIN the tags
are OK --->

<textarea name="txtMessage" cols="65" rows="2" id="txtMessage"><cflock
scope="Session" timeout="10" type="readOnly"><cfif
IsDefined('session.sessMessage')><cfoutput>#Sessio n.sessMessage#</cfoutput></cfi
f><cfif Not IsDefined('session.sessMessage')><cfset session.sessMessage =
""></cfif></cflock></textarea>