thanks for posting this alternate way of doing it, probably easier for many people.
i actually used the other hack's way of installing but just wanted to point out that people should probably get the actual "Edit Area" component from the author's site or sourceforge so that you get the newest version. The one attached to this hack was version "0.7.2.3", i am currently running version "0.8.1.1" with vBulletin 3.8.3 and no problems thus far.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/editarea/