What's the best approach to get Date/Time input from the user?

Question

This is a wheel that's been re-invented again and again over the years.

The Problem: The user needs to input a Date/Time

Basic considerations

• We want to make it as easy as possible for the user to enter the desired date/time
• Some applications call for historical dates, some applications call for future dates only, some will need to handle both
• We want to prevent the user from entering jibberish data
• We want to auto-populate this control as aggressively as possible.
• We want this control to be as re-usable as possible.

Popular solutions include:

• Text Boxes
• Combo Boxes
• Pop-out calendars
• Server-side and/or client-side validation
• Various ways of alerting the users about bad data

There are a panoply of ready-to-eat solutions about, but I'm looking for some more general information. Have there been any usability studies done on the various date-time-control approaches? Is there a "best" date-time control out there? Are there any well-established "Dos and Don'ts"?

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Related question: Best GUI control(s) to describe a time range