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Asked: 2026-05-20T16:09:45+00:00

A <select> might be good for choosing between 3-15 simple items, but how do

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A <select> might be good for choosing between 3-15 simple items, but how do you deal with 15-100+?

The simplest option would be to just have a plain <select> with a lot of <option>s, but it’s not very user friendly. There’s a lot of scrolling and it might be hard to find the option you are looking for. The benefit is that you can (maybe with scrolling) see all the options you have.

A more advanced option would be to have a text field with autocomplete. A user types in a letter or two, and search results come back which you choose from. It makes it easier to find the option you are looking for – if you know what you are looking for. The drawback is that the user can’t see all the options.

An even more advanced option would be to build a “search, list and choose” widget which defaults to show X items, but allows you to search. An advantage of this approach is that I can allow search on multiple attributes and not just the name of the item which is to be selected.

  1. What solutions have you deployed in
    these situations?
  2. Is there a jQuery plugin I should know about?
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  1. Editorial Team
    1. The solution that I like to use is provide the user a select list with all the options (should they want to look through it), but provide an autocomplete feature which searches through the list as they type into it. Sort of a hybrid of your first and second options.
    2. As for plug-ins, there are a number out there (as well as documentation which will lead you to more) that can help you here:
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