Since IE 8 doesn’t support the attribute maxlength, we need to use java script to workout this functionality. We can write the script as follows.

<textarea id="clm_add_lin_dta" maxlength="80" name="clm_add_lin_dta" style="resize:none;" onchange="testLength(this,80)" onkeyup="testLength(this,80)" onpaste="testLength(this,80)"></textarea>

<script>
   function testLength(ta,maxLength ) {
        if (ta.value.length > maxLength) {
            ta.value = ta.value.substring(0, maxLength);
        }
    }
</script>