Check for Bakcspace or Delete Key

Question

I'm playing with a textarea and trying to make it so the user cannot exceed maxLength unless the key pressed is a backspace or delete key. The problem is my keyCode conditional is always coming out to true. Why is that?

var maxLength = 500;
window.onload = init;                // this seems to be a problem
commentBox.onkeydown = checkLength;

function checkLength(e)
{
    var evt = e || window.event;

    if(countText() < maxLength) //countText successfully returns number of nonwhitespace text.
        return true;
    else if(evt.keyCode == 46 || evt.keycode == 8)  // 46 = delete, 8 = backspace.
        return true;
    else
        return false;
}

Here's a JSFiddle to help better understand. The delete key works in JSFiddle but not locally for some reason or another. Delete on the otherhand still does not work.

Answer 1

Found it finally....

You are using evt.keycode which is a small typo error

 else if(evt.keyCode == 46 || evt.keyCode == 8)  // 46 = delete, 8 = backspace.

Cheers