I’ve worked on large data entry forms for decades. I stopped using maxlength a long time ago because of this. Entry should be free form, truncation is unexpecte

I’ve worked on large data entry forms for decades. I stopped using maxlength a long time ago because of this. Entry should be free form, truncation is unexpected behavior. Validation should catch the limitation and never manipulate what the user entered. People paste not realizing text got cutoff and information gets lost. They type without looking at the screen. I’ve even seen it used on a password setting form but not on the sign in form so anyone that thinks they set a password larger than the limit thinks it succeeded but login fails and even tech support gets baffled for hours. We already know client side limits aren’t enough and server validation is required anyway. Trying to cleverly “help” entry usually just causes headaches for users and devs. Dynamically showing/hiding, enabling/disabling, focus jumping, auto formatting, updating other fields based on other values, is usually confusing for the user and more difficult to program correctly. Just show it all, allow all entry and catch everything in the validation code, everyone will be happier.