http://forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5402813 I never saw it when I was using Chrome, but I have been forced to use Firefox (3.5.3) for some days now, and now I understand what you are talking about. It happens quite frequently that editing "freezes" for a while. Per Ramsci: I am thinking, there must be some thing in this feature [character counter] that seems to cause issues on certain browsers. How about if we provide a way for users to turn this off in their user settings. That way, they can turn off the feature for them. By default, we have it turned on. what ya say ? Experts who have this issue will turn it off and also know the character limits anyway. Engineering LOE : Its a 1 day LOE. I am working on User Settings changes anyway for the automatic watch purge feature. So, adding this is not going to be super difficult.