Character Count

I am trying to add character and word count. So far this is the best example I found.

http://romza.com/counter.html

It has few major problems I am not sure how to fix - for example it counts   as characters - try to add spaces and you'll see.

1. How do I get plain text from the ckeditor?

2. How do I re-factor the code from the above example to support multiple editors on the same page and remove inline javascript from textareas?