Designing A Textbox, Unabridged

This is a super-detailed post about building a textarea
with feedback about how much you’ve written in it, relative to the defined maxlength
. There are some great recommendations here, especially:
- Start with sensible helper text;
- Use JavaScript to smartly enhance the experience; and
- Always provide a non-JavaScript fallback.
I gave similar advice in a piece I wrote for Web Standards Sherpa a few years back.