Adam,
I put in the progress bar and flashing message. I didn't see that Derek already put the flashing message in with a subsequent post. Mine is a little different in that it only flashes a few times with red and blue colors, then stays solid. You can control the speed of the flash by changing the "sleep()" command. You can also control the number of times it flashes with the For Loop max. If you want continuous flashing then you should use Derek's solution.
Also, as an alternative to the message length, I put in 19 in the maxlength in the object inspector. I expanded the message window a little so you can see Derek's caption better. I placed the max in there as well. When the user reaches the max length, the system beeps and they can no longer enter any more characters. The result is the same, but no popup error message is required with user intervention to close the info window. Just something else to put in your library of MVD knowledge.