Glen,

>Take a look at this one:
>http://www.yui-ext.com/deploy/ext-1.0-alpha3/examples/form/combos.html
><http://www.yui-ext.com/deploy/ext-1.0-alpha3/examples/form/combos.html>
>
>It goes WAY beyond what a typical select box does.  Nice styling.  Keyboard
>shortcuts, tabbing.  Nice scrolling.  Type in to limit the choices. Based
>on normal select markup. It is everything a select box SHOULD be.  The down
>side is that the JS for it 400k (108k compressed).  This is a too big to
>use on a public website.  I think something like this could be made smaller
>and simpler if the only mission was the selectbox.
>
>Also, I liked how you put "design" in quotes.  It makes me feel good about
>myself. ;)

Jack does great stuff--no doubt. 

However, the one problem that every single DHTML replacement I've ever seen
has can also be seen here. 

* Look at the "Unobtrusive" section. 
* Make sure the "Originally looked like:" select box is at the bottom of the
screen.
* Left click to select an option (and notice the select box makes itself
always visible.
* Now try selecting an option in the "Transformed select:" selection box. 

See how the "dropdown" gets hidden? You have to manually scroll to see all
the options.

This is why I don't like replacing select boxes with DHTML elements when the
select box already has all the functionality you need. 

I mean when you really need auto-complete/auto-suggest functionality or need
a behavior that the <select /> tag doesn't have, well then that's a
different beast. To use a DHTML replacement purely for aesthetics is where I
have problems. Users just end up getting confused or irritated. 

-Dan



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