Free text entry for attribute

[David Lubich]

I'm working on a 'design your own t-shirt' site, for which users will be able to select either a limited list of popular colours or choose custom colours. I'd like them to be able to choose any Pantone colours, but it's not exectly practical to have a 1,000-strong drop-down, so I'd like for them to be eble to enter their Pantone ref themselves. A few questions
flow from this
1) is it possible to have free text entry for an attribute/choice and if so, how?
2) can there be some sort of validation (maximum number of characters, only allow digits etc)
3) we'd like users to slect up to four colours - will it be possible to do this, mixing free-text (pantone) and drop-down choices.
thanks in advance for your help.
David

[jont]

May be worth checking out Normans additional other info prompts at www.drillpine.biz - this is donationware but is worth it. I have recently implemented this on a site to great effect for user imput - you could have say 4 extra inputs for the pantone colours and you can restrict the number of characters entered.

May be worth using a drop down box for the most popular Pantone colours if your users are not familiar with how the Pantone system works or don't have access to a colour chart. You may need to mention that colours viewed on a screen will render different to the finished print.

HTH