Limiting number of characters in an input field.

[SandraSD]

On our website we are trying to include the following function:

Customers buy a Gift Certificate.
After Gift Certificate is released, they get email to remind them to log into they accounts to be able to use "Send Gift Certificate" page (email Gift Certificate to someone).

On this page we need to limit number of characters and put a warning message, if they go over the limit (let's say 200 characters) in "Personal message" input field. They get an email with HTML page and text implemented into a Gift Certificate image.

Is the a way to achieve this using "maximum permitted characters" function in ZC text attributes? If there is, how do we do it? We are not quite sure how to use this feature...
Or is there another way??

Thanks.

[gjh42]

See this thread: Implementing (Limit Textarea) code into input field of "Gift Certificate" page?