One of the cool things about Spotfire is that its visualizations and text areas are all browser-based, even in Analyst clients. This means that you can customize aspects of the user interface, develop your own JavaScript controls, or manipulate property controls by showing/hiding them, and so on.
The usage of JavaScript in text areas is totally distinct from the Spotfire JavaScript API. The JavaScript API is covered later on in this chapter.
You can also customize the HTML that's used in text areas—you can build table layouts, surround property controls with DIV elements, and more.
HTML in text areas is (by default) sanitized. This means that any HTML elements that could possibly lead to security holes in your Spotfire application are disabled. There's more information on HTML sanitation...