[dartho]

Not sure how compatible this stuff is, but this may work:

edit your CSS file and add:

.hidden { visibility:hidden; }

alternatively you could edit the editor_ckeditor template and add the following to the top

<style>
.hidden { visibility:hidden; }
</style>

then edit the pm_newpm template and replace

<textarea name="message" rows="20" cols="20" style="width:100%; height:100px" tabindex="1"></textarea>

with

{vb:raw messagearea}

and that might do it