title: Jquery textarea .val() returning undefined unexpectedly
body: <p>The following code has been working for a few weeks and has started occasionally returning 'undefined' when I use a selector in jquery to get the textarea's value, like so:</p>
  
  <pre><code>var text = escape($(this).find('textarea[id*=txtText]').val());
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This control is appropriately defined below in the HTML by the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;asp:TextBox ID="txtText" runat="server" MaxLength="150" alt="150" TextMode="MultiLine"
       Rows="5" Columns="50" CssClass="customCss" ClientIDMode="Static" /&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I had previously accessed the text by calling the following in my jquery:</p>
  
  <pre><code>var text = escape($("#txtText").val());
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But this had started returning undefined as well, which is why I changed it to the prior example. I'm confused as to why some instances of this work, and others do not.  Being a multiline textbox, could jquery be declaring it as undefined due to any </p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;br/&gt;   
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>characters that are included in the textarea?</p>
  
  <p>Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.</p>