Something that I’ve seen on other sites, particularly online SMS sending tools, is form textarea’s that have a little box telling you how many characters you’ve typed, or that you have left to enter. It’s not that tricky to setup really. You need a form with a textarea, and a very simple Javascript function to count the code.

/* javascript function to update form field * field      form field that is being counted * count      form field that will show characters left * maxchars    maximum number of characters    */ function characterCount(field, count, maxchars) {    if (field.value.length > maxchars) {       field.value = field.value.substring(0, maxchars);       alert("Error: - You are only allowed to enter up to "+maxchars+" characters.");    } else {       count.value = maxchars - field.value.length;    } }

The textarea needs a couple of event handlers so it knows to do something:

The full code can be seen or you can view the demo.