A jQuery plugin that adds a character counter to inputs and textareas.

The countable plugin has 13 settings:

• threshold - The percentage at which the counter begins to fade in. Default is 0.5.
• appendMethod - One of insertAfter, insertBefore, prependTo, or appendTo to insert the counter after or before the input/textarea or prepend or append to the target element. Default is 'insertAfter'.
• target - The element used relatively for the appendMethod option. Default is the actual input or textarea.
• startOpacity - The percentage of opacity it should start out with once it reaches the threshold. Default is 0.25.
• maxLength - The maximum number of characters. Default uses the maxlength attribute of the input/textarea.
• maxClassName - The class name to add once the user has gone over the max number of characters. Default is 'maxed'.
• className - The class name for the counter. Default is 'counter'.
• tagName - The type of tag to use for the counter. Default is span.
• interval - The interval at which it checks the input/textarea. Default is 750.
• positiveCopy - The copy to use when the character count is below the max. Use {n} to denote where the number should go. Default is 'You have {n} characters left.'.
• negativeCopy - The copy to use when the character count is over the max. Use {n} to denote where the number should go. Default is 'You are {n} characters over.'.
• fadeDuration - The duration of the fade animations. Default is 'normal'.
• defaultText - Text to ignore in the character count. This would be used if you have default text that disappears when focus is brought to the text box. Default is ''.

Add counter to all textarea objects on the page using defaults:

$("textarea").countable();

Add counters to a specific set of text fields, before each element:

$("#myTextBox, textarea.info").countable({ appendMethod: "insertBefore" });

Add counter to a specific textarea, but display in a given container element (with other advanced options):

$("#comments").each(function() {
  $(this).countable({
    threshold: .75,
    appendMethod: "appendTo",
    target: $(this).parent().find("label small"),
    startOpacity: 1,
    maxLength: $(this).metadata().maxLength,
    positiveCopy: " ({n} characters left)",
    negativeCopy: " ({n} characters over the limit)",
    fadeDuration: 0,
    defaultText: "Enter message"
  })
});

Note: In the last example, the code is wrapped in an each() function call to get this to point to the text element. Also, maxLength is being pulled from contextual information using the metadata jQuery plugin (http://plugins.jquery.com/project/metadata).

The countable plugin is licensed under the MIT License (LICENSE.txt).

Copyright (c) 2010 Brandon Aaron

Neil Monroe (neil.monroe[at]gmail.com)