What is the best way to limit the amount of text that can be entered into a 'textarea'?

Question

What is the best way to limit the amount of text that a user can enter into a \'textarea\' field on a web page? The application in question is ASP .NET, but a platform agnos

Answer 1

function limit(element, max_chars)
{
    if(element.value.length > max_chars)
        element.value = element.value.substr(0, max_chars);
}

As javascript, and...

As XHTML. Replace 80 with your desired limit. This is how I do it anyway.

Note that this will prevent the user from typing past the limit in the textbox, however the user could still bypass this using javascript of their own. To make sure, you must also check with your server side language.