Multi-character dropdown

Rails
1

The normal behavior for a drop-down (combo) box is to position itself to
the next entry STARTING with the character typed. In my experience,
the more desired behavior would be to position it according to the total
characters typed. In other words, If I type “AND”, I’d like the box to
position itself to the first entry starting with “AND”.

Does anyone know a way to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance
—Michael

2

Works with firefox, not with IE (others?)
If you want a real combo box, and not a simple html dropdown, try the
auto complete helpers.
The drop down will be generated by your server (via an xhr), you’ll be
free to do whatever you want with the string entered. Yet I don’t know
any simple way to get an ID back from the selected entry if the
selected string is not itself a key in the database. I used to hack my
way out by passing an “[id]” in the string and parsing it, but that is
fugly :confused: May or may not be a good choice, then.

3

Benoit B. wrote:

Works with firefox, not with IE (others?)

Multi-character selects work with FireFox? I’m missing something here.
Is that a configuration parameter - or am I losing it? I don’t recall
seeing this behavior. As a Linux type, Firefox is my main browser.

4

Benoit B. wrote:

Firefox win32 does it,

By default, or do you enable it somehow? Is it only in Firefox’s combos,
or in combo boxes on forms on the web? If the former, it’s just the way
they programmed it (I do that, too) - If the latter, I’m REALLY
interested.

5

Firefox win32 does it, for sure. But a lot of people are not
accustomed to it and won’t use it, since IE doesn’t support it. It’s
very handy with country selection drop-down, esp. in China (I hate
Chili! :O)

6

It works on any combo-box, and it’s a default setting that have been
there for ages…
I don’t understand why you would be “REALLY interested” in that
since you don’t have any way to change this behavior on other browsers
(As far as I know).

7

Benoit B. wrote:

It works on any combo-box, and it’s a default setting that have been
there for ages…
I don’t understand why you would be “REALLY interested” in that
since you don’t have any way to change this behavior on other browsers
(As far as I know).

What I’m doing is a specialized application. If I ask them to use
Firefox for it, they will.