Tom,

You can easily use a VFP Shape control for this. Set the BackColor to 255,0,0 and then fiddle around with the DrawMode until you get the desired effect. The Merge, Mask and XOR pens work best for this situation.

Your Textbox subclass could easily be setup to automatically add the shape to this.parent during it's Init. Create the name from the name of the control itself like this.parent.AddObject( "shp" + this.Name, "shpErrorMarker" ). You can control the .Visible property to turn the highlight on and off.

>I once watched an H+R Block employee fill out a tax declaration for me. When the system detected an error, a lovely red circle drew itself around each field in error, right in front of your eyes.
>
>Has anyone seen this object and know where I could buy it? It was really cute.