There is nothing wrong with <textarea> it is just sometimes you need more control than you can get from <textarea> in those instances using contenteditable is a

There is nothing wrong with <textarea> it is just sometimes you need more control than you can get from <textarea> in those instances using contenteditable is a perfectly fine solution. Othertimes you realize dropping the feature and sticking to <textarea> is also fine. As a front end developer I use either under different circumstances. If a feature like marking the portion of text that overflows the allowed length of the input, makes sense for the app, I will grab a contenteditable for the job. If it turns out it is enough to tell users that the text was too long with an error message under the text box, then I will just use a <textarea>, potentially with the Constraint Validation API.