THIS ISNT QUITE WORKING.  JUst some scarps
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# Then I added following function in ui.R of shiny webapp before shinyUI() is called

inputTextarea <- function(inputId, value="", nrows, ncols) {
    tagList(
        singleton(tags$head(tags$script(src = "textarea.js"))),
        tags$textarea(id = inputId,
                    class = "inputtextarea",
                    rows = nrows,
                    cols = ncols,
                    as.character(value))
    )
}

# Then I used above defined function to create the desired textarea control element in ui.R

shinyUI(pageWithSidebar(

  # Application title
  headerPanel("Test Header Panel"),

  sidebarPanel(),

  mainPanel(
        inputTextarea('exampleTextarea', '',20,35 )
  )
))


You can add a textarea using tags and it should be picked up by Shiny automatically:

tags$textarea(id="foo", rows=3, cols=40, "Default value")

Or if youre more comfortable with straight HTML you can also do

HTML('<textarea id="foo" rows="3" cols="40">Default value</textarea>')

In either case, input$foo should reflect the textareas value.