One of the frustrating aspects of salesforce is some of the UI element generation it does (and in this case, doesn’t do) for you. While  <apex:inputField required=”true”> will add the standard salesforce required indicator (the red bar) to your page with no further effort, if you have to drop down to the lower level <apex:inputText [...]

Need to enter real Date Of Birth of a customer who is more then 5 years old? I am sure at some point you will come across this issue (if you haven’t already) where you only see next 5 years of values in the Date & date/Time fields based on the current year. For example: [...]