Ajax Select Boxes

[amykhar]

I'm not sure what control or interface will best do what I'm looking for and I'm hoping somebody can point me in the right direction.

The problem: I have a database of a huge number of things. I need the user to be able to select from these specific things. But, there are too many to put in a dropdown.

Initially, I was using something like vbulletin does with the name suggest for pms. If you type in the first 3 letters of what you are looking for, a menu popped up from the database with all the options that contained that snippet. The more you typed, the more refined the options became.

BUT, this created a problem because the popup menus obliterate select boxes beneath it in Internet Explorer. Because the stupid form I have to work with is huge, there is no real way to arrange the form so that no ajax field is above a select box.

Ideally, I could put an empty select box on the page. If the user started typing the first 3 letters, the select box would fill with the appropriate options. The problem is that select boxes don't let you type 3 characters. Each character you type sends you to the options that start with that letter.

I thought putting in a textbox and having it change to the selectbox when the options filled would work, but upon reflection it won't because we lose the ability to refine the search and we can't go back and search again if we mess up the first time.

I also considered a text box to type the query in and then fill an adjacent select box with the results of the query, but the form already has too many controls.

Redesigning the form to have less stuff on it is not an option. The client wants all the stuff on one screen. Argh.

So, to summarize, what I need is an intuitive way for the user to create a mechanism to select from a huge list of stuff in the database and enter the selection into a form. Any ideas or links to things you think might work?

Amy