Question: How does Stackoverflow do the character counter saying xyz characters left?

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fZD01.png)

Answer: 
Probably something like (with jQuery):

```
$('#txtbox').keypress(function() {
    var max = 500;
    var textLen = $(this).val().length;
    var textLeft = max - textLen;
    $('#charCount').text(
        textLeft + ' character' + (textLeft == 1 ? '' : 's') + ' left'
    );
});

```

(I know it's lazy to not actually look and see how they do it, but here's a working example: <http://jsfiddle.net/FishBasketGordo/hqex8/>)
Probably something like this:

var max = 1000;

```
document.getElementById('freddy').onkeypress =
document.getElementById('freddy').onkeyup = 
document.getElementById('freddy').onkeydown = function(){
    var count = this.value.length;
    if(max < count){
        this.value = this.value.substring(0,999);
        return false;
    }
    setTimeout(function(){
        document.getElementById('susan').innerHTML =
          (max-count)+' characters left!';
    },1);
};

```

<http://jsfiddle.net/Paulpro/S4Dtu/>