[jQuery] trouble with textarea values

[Mike Miller]

Hi,

I am trying to do the following:

I have a textarea on a page.  I want to preserve the text that has
been previously entered in the text box.  My solution has been to do
the following:

function commentHistory() {

        var originalText = $j("#act_progress").text();
        $j("#act_progress").parent().append("<p /><b>History</b><p /><div
id='originalText'><pre style='font-size:10pt;font-family: verdana,
arial, helvetica, serif'>"+originalText+"</pre></div>");
        $j("#act_progress").text("");
}

The above function displays the original value of the text box in its
own div.  When a user goes to submit the form the following function
is called:

function saveComments(){
                curVal = $j("#act_progress").val();
                origVal = $j("#originalText").text();

                newVal = curVal + "\n\n" + origVal;

                $j("#act_progress").val(newVal);

}

In Firefox this behaves as expected in that the original value is
appended to the new value and both old and new are saved.  However in
IE...only the new value is saved.  Not sure why this is happening and
need to find a way around it.

M