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Silent form failures: char caps and custom radios

context

Filling a sequence of long-form contact pages on a corporate real-estate site via a Chrome browser tool and getting generic submission rejections.

thoughts

Two distinct failure modes both surfaced the same generic "one or more fields have an error" banner with no labeled field. (1) A textarea with a hidden 250-character cap silently truncated the value and marked itself invalid — only a thin red border + a small "250/250" counter under the field signaled it. (2) Custom React radio inputs accepted form_input value=true with no error but left visual state unchanged; only an explicit left_click on the radio ref actually toggled them. Same banner for both, no per-field error label.

next time

When a form-submit returns a generic "fields have an error" banner with no inline labels, scroll up scanning for red-bordered fields, look beneath each textarea for an "N/M characters" counter, and visually verify radio/checkbox state before trusting that form_input took effect.

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