the ns_getform comment refers to what I said above when I was trying to trace exactly what makes IE give up and bail. You're right; ns_form isn't writing anything, but it seems to be the culprit in whatever timing issues are involved. (So playing around with hidden variables isn't going to help that.)
The problem isn't (directly) related to the length of form var names, but it is related to the size of the form data submitted, so if I have 40 dynamically generated select boxes in my form, it makes a significant difference when I use a 10 character name for each box than when I use a 20 character name. With the longer name, the max form elements I could have before seeing this problem was about half what it is now.
