Hate to post in an old thread, but to not let the info go to waste:
For a European style date, what worked for me was a normal textbox with a mask of 99-99-9999 and a RegExp valdiation of:
^(?
?:31(\/|-|\.)(?:0?[13578]|1[02]))\1|(?
?:29|30)(\/|-|\.)(?:0?[1,3-9]|1[0-2])\2))(?
?:1[6-9]|[2-9]\d)?\d{2})$|^(?:29(\/|-|\.)0?2\3(?
?
?:1[6-9]|[2-9]\d)?(?:0[48]|[2468][048]|[13579][26])|(?
?:16|[2468][048]|[3579][26])00))))$|^(?:0?[1-9]|1\d|2[0-8])(\/|-|\.)(?
?:0?[1-9])|(?:1[0-2]))\4(?
?:1[6-9]|[2-9]\d)?\d{2})$
(see
http://regexlib.com/REDetails.aspx?...xp_id=151)
For birthdates this works much quicker then the datepicker.