>- see footer for list info -< If you want some justification on the usability side, read Jakob Nielsen. Firstly this one from earlier this year where he says "users suffered a lot of needless interaction overhead when trying to select "Hong Kong" from immense drop-downs containing hundreds of countries and territories" - and that's for a list of just hundreds not even thousands. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/annoyances.html
And way back in 2000, "Drop-Down Menus: Use Sparingly": http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001112.html Duncan Cumming New Media Developer Customer Relations Management / Education Fife Council 700 4105 / 01592 414105 >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 29/06/2007 12:17:48 >>> >- see footer for list info -< hi, i ma trying to improve performance and useability on a page I have inherited. Currenbtly, there is a dropdown at the top of the page that loads all th users in the system. This is just a simple dropwn, so you pick a user, the whole page reloads (with that userid sent as a URL parameter) and displays all the graphs and info for that user. This works perfectly fine with a small amount of users. The company has now had massive growth, and the number of users in the system is now something like 100,000+, and now the page is taking way too long to load (over 10secs sometimes). There are 2 thiings slowing it down, the stored proc to get the list of users is taking a few secs, but the main problem is that the size of the html page returned to the browser to load (with 100,00+ options in the user select dropdown) is about 4MB. Combined, this makes the page sooo slow. The company likes the idea of the dropdown of users though, and would like to keep it. Is this a case for AJAX ? I am familiar with AJAX, and have used it in a small scale before, but not for anything this big. If i were to use it, I would need to start populating the dropdown when the page loaded (so would not be waiting for an onClick or an onChange event), would the page still be useable (ie, could a user still click on all the other stuff on the page, would it still scroll, etc) ? Also, would it still have the same problems with about 4MB of data being sent to it to display ? Also, the user would still have to wait quite a while with the drop down saying just "loading" or something while the data was being collected and sent back to the page, so woudl still not be ideal. Would anyone have any suggestions about how you could display a very large dropdown (large amount of otpions), without have to use an actual select list dropdown (if that makes sense) ? How have other people presented an extremely large option slelect list to users ? any ideas appreciated ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Answers - Got a question? Someone out there knows the answer. Try it now. http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ For details on ALL mailing lists and for joining or leaving lists, go to http://list.cfdeveloper.co.uk/mailman/listinfo -- CFDeveloper Sponsors:- >- cfdeveloper Hosting provided by www.cfmxhosting.co.uk -< >- Lists hosted by www.Gradwell.com -< >- CFdeveloper is run by Russ Michaels, feel free to volunteer your help -< ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed and should not be disclosed to any other party. If you have received this email in error please notify your system manager and the sender of this message. This email message has been swept for the presence of computer viruses but no guarantee is given that this e-mail message and any attachments are free from viruses. Fife Council reserves the right to monitor the content of all incoming and outgoing email. Fife Council Tel: 08451 55 00 00 ************************************************ _______________________________________________ For details on ALL mailing lists and for joining or leaving lists, go to http://list.cfdeveloper.co.uk/mailman/listinfo -- CFDeveloper Sponsors:- >- cfdeveloper Hosting provided by www.cfmxhosting.co.uk -< >- Lists hosted by www.Gradwell.com -< >- CFdeveloper is run by Russ Michaels, feel free to volunteer your help -<
