HTML
<textarea id="brief"></textarea>Brief decription<br /><span id="briefleft"></span>
JQuery
$('textarea#brief').keyup(function() {
var len = this.value.length;
if (len >= 100) {
this.value = this.value.substring(0, 100);
}
$('#briefleft').text(100 – len + ' characters left');
});
