Can I style the resize grabber of textarea?

Question

My designer just gave me the design with text areas with styled resize grabber. The question is: Can I style it or not ?

Answer 1

WebKit provides the pseudo-element ::-webkit-resizer for the resize control it automatically adds to the bottom right of textarea elements.

It can be hidden by applying display: none or -webkit-appearance: none:

::-webkit-resizer {
  display: none;
}

<textarea></textarea>

This displays as follows in Chrome 26 on OS X:

Note: Adding display: none to ::-webkit-resizer doesn’t actually prevent the user from resizing the textarea, it just hides the control. If you want to disable resizing, set the resize CSS property to none. This also hides the control and has the added benefit of working in all browsers that support resizing textareas.

The ::-webkit-resizer pseudo-element also allows for some basic styling. If you thought the resize control could use significantly more color you could add this:

::-webkit-resizer {
  border: 2px solid black;
  background: red;
  box-shadow: 0 0 5px 5px blue;
  outline: 2px solid yellow;
}

<textarea></textarea>

This displays as follows in Chrome 26 on OS X: