Every hour that you put into enhancing user experience while developing a site is a hour well spent. There are numerous small improvements that you can perform to make things easier and obvious for the end user. In this article I will present a jQuery plugin built for that purpose.
The best way to explain what this plugin does is to mention Twitter. Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters. While typing the Twitter post there is this always present information about how many characters the users have before reaching the limit. The information is not only provided merely by displaying a number, there are different colors applied to certain stages to notify the user about the status.
On your site you might have a comment box or contact form fields limited to certain character count. You can use this simple plugin to provide user with that useful information.
Take a look at the demo or Download plugin
How it works
The first thing that this plugin do is create a sibling element (it adds is immediately AFTER the form element), the "counter", where the remaining character info is stored. On each key up event or text field value change the counting function is triggered and the contents of this "counter" element is changed accordingly. If the remaining character count reaches the "warning" zone (gets close to zero) the CSS class is added. We use this class to change the color of the character count info. If the count reaches zero and goes beyond it another class is added so we can use another style for exceeding the limit.
Just so you can find your way around it, this is the code that the plugin generates by default:
<span class="counter">140</span>
Plugin Options (and default values)
limit: 140
The character limit you wish to set for your text area or input field. It must be a number.
warning: 25
When remaining characters reach the number set with this option the "warning" css class name will be applied to the counter element.
counterElement: 'span'
The type of element you wish to choose as your "counter" element. By default it is a SPAN element, but you can use paragraphs, divs, strongs, ems...
css: 'counter'
Class name added to the counter element. Use this class name as a css selector to describe element's appearance.
cssWarning: 'warning'
Class name added to the counter element once the character count reaches the "warning" number.
cssExceeded: 'exceeded'
Class name added to the counter element once the character count reaches zero.
counterText: ''
If you wish to add some text before the remaining character number, you can do so by using this option. It is empty by default.
Here's what default usage code looks like:
$("#message1").charCount();
...and this is the plugin usage with some customized options:
$("#message2").charCount({
allowed: 50,
warning: 20,
counterText: 'Characters left: '
});
Also take a look at the CSS I used for my demos:
form .counter{
position:absolute;
right:0;
top:0;
font-size:20px;
font-weight:bold;
color:#ccc;
}
form .warning{color:#600;}
form .exceeded{color:#e00;}
Since I am (always) wrapping the label and form element into a div, I positioned the counter absolutely in relation to the containing div.
You can visit the demo page to see this plugin in action or you can download the plugin package. Let us know your thoughts.
Designer, developer and a passionate standardista. Long time web professional with huge experience in all types of front-end work. Founder of Css Globe and creator of
bartonm on 18 Jan, 2010 wrote:
B on 18 Jan, 2010 wrote:
Mary Lou on 18 Jan, 2010 wrote:
http://tympanus.net/codrops/2009/11/08/jmaxinput-twitter-like-textarea/
cssglobe on 18 Jan, 2010 wrote:
B on 18 Jan, 2010 wrote:
if you want to copypaste a text with right click then the counter is not changing at the first place just if u press a key or leaves the input field.
if u do the same on twitter then you can see that that remaining characters are changing immediately when you press paste.
hopefully I was understandable. :)
wespai on 19 Jan, 2010 wrote:
ajax.wespai.com
web design miami on 19 Jan, 2010 wrote:
thanks for sharing !
Kristiono Setyadi on 20 Jan, 2010 wrote:
ankit@visionaspire.com on 20 Jan, 2010 wrote:
thanks for sharing
waynep on 21 Jan, 2010 wrote:
@cssglobe but there's more instances:
1) select some text and click drag drop on the text input.
2) right click -> cut
3) in OS X (I believe maybe in FF Windows), right click to correct spelling
4 ???) if you use this on a field that the browser will prefill, does it work?
If any of these situations seem like corner cases, keep in mind accessibility :)
The only way I've found to accurately do a character count on an input is to run a task and poll the input every 500ms.
ASAD on 21 Jan, 2010 wrote:
Bryan Watson on 21 Jan, 2010 wrote:
This would also solve the the 'long key press bug' that this also doesn't account for.
Simply put, hold down a key, it counts the first character, but not the ones after. Then the counter updates upon key release.
web design kent on 22 Jan, 2010 wrote:
SohoInteractive on 25 Jan, 2010 wrote:
Thank you
Web Design Company on 26 Jan, 2010 wrote:
sherwin Shine on 27 Jan, 2010 wrote:
Theo on 28 Jan, 2010 wrote:
Thank you for sharing
cssclassic on 29 Jan, 2010 wrote:
Ogaaaan on 29 Jan, 2010 wrote:
I hope adding property "minimum".
if user value was not reached 5 characters, i want to display browser "Please enter at least 5 characters".
best regards.
New York Web Design on 29 Jan, 2010 wrote:
You made my day...!!
Karthik on 1 Feb, 2010 wrote:
VV on 17 Feb, 2010 wrote: