Prova cosi....
codice:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Untitled</title>
</head>
<body>
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
function checkChars(aTextarea) {
a = aTextarea.value;
document.getElementById('conta').innerHTML = a.length;
if (a.length >= 300) {
alert('Too much characters');
aTextarea.value =aTextarea.value.substr(0,300);
return false;
}
return true;
}
//-->
</script>
<textarea cols="50" rows="20" id="text" onkeydown="checkChars(this)"></textarea>
<div id="conta"></div>
</body>
</html>