Question

In my admin section, when I edit items, I have to attach each item to a parent item. I have a list of over 24,000 parent items, which are listed alphabetically in a drop down list (a list of music artists).

The edit page that lists all these items in a drop down menu is 2MB, and it lags like crazy for people with old machines, especially in Internet Explorer.

Whats a good alternative to replicate the same function, where I would need to select 1 of these 24,000 artists, without actually having them all pre-loaded into a drop down menu.

Answer 1

Instead of filling a drop list with so many names you could:

1. Create a simple search mechanism where you match the start of a name
2. Make use of categories (if any are available) and multiple combo boxes to narrow selection
3. Same as above, some sort of tree structure with a categorical hierarchy
4. A shortcuts control where there is a link or a button for letter of the alphabet (meta-category)

Of course a lot of this depends on the stack you’re implementing e.g. are you using AJAX or jQuery, access to a db/type.