Ok, that works better for some fields. It started off with just one field and has expanded to the whole set.
If a textarea is required, my cart goes through a continuous loop and doesn't recognize the data that is entered by the user using the following code in my default.php. Hopefully you can spot the problem.
Additionally with textareas, I thought I might get the characters remaining to display using the following code, however that didn't pan out for me either, but I was just guessing based on the "onclick" syntax.
<textarea name="data[item][recipient]" id="recipient" rows="4" cols="45" onclick="hikashopToggleFields(this.value,'recipient','item',0);" onblur="hikashopTextCounter(this.value,'recipient_count','item',0);" onkeyup="hikashopTextCounter(this.value,'recipient_count','item',0);" ></textarea>
If i'm using a date field, the calendar does not become active whether i use the following code or if i change the type to "date" or "item" instead of text. It looks nice.
<label>Mail Later</label>
<input id="maillater" type="text" onchange="maillater_checkDate(1);" value="<?php echo date('Y-m-d'); ?>" name="data[item][maillater]" >
<img id="maillater_img" class="calendar" alt="Calendar" src="/media/system/images/calendar.png">
I would appreciate your suggestions. Thank you.