adding font formatting features to jsp

Hi all,
I am new to j2ee, and i have to make a page where the text area for a field has a certain aspect. If we select some portion of the sentences that will be written in it,and click on the bold option(much like the one i am using here),that portion will be in bold letters and will be saved accordingly in database.

I have no idea about javascript and i am new to jsp.So can you give me a little outline for how to do it? i don't want spoonfeeding,just a liitle idea as i am very short on time for this one.

JSP will be of no help to you. You'll need to use a JavaScript rich text editor.

may i know which rich text editor is used in javaranch?

We don't have a rich text editor here at the Ranch. We have a plain HTML textarea along with a bunch of UBB style tags/buttons that work with pure JavaScript.

You could check for Primefaces that it is a component of JSF. It has a text editor.

Another JSF solution is to use the RichFaces Editor control.

But for non-JSF pages, there's tinyMCE, which is what RichFaces builds on. There's also several other rich text editor components available, but for those I'll just have to recommend your favourite search engine.