OT! Sorry to clog this board. Dot Net question, Someone here always has an answer Options

[Qarl]

First, my apologies for clogging the 914club forum with this. However, there are enough programming geeks here to usually solve my problems.

Here is what I need help with.

I have been having someone design a web-application for me.

The web application is designed using Microsoft .net framework 1.1.

It has a Microsoft SQL back end and requires Internet Explorer (due to some of the Active X controls)

Part of my application involves choosing data from drop-down lists that contain hundreds of numerical codes.

Does anyone know if tjere is a way to make the drop down lists "smart" using dot net and the web browser? Whereby you can begin typing the first few characters of the data you want from the drop down list and the drop down list automatically takes you to the code in the list that matches. I believe it's called "smart find"

Microsoft Access does this with their drop down lists.

Right now, I believe that .net and Internet Explorer are intelligent only for the first character. (i..e, it matches only the first character).

If you know a .net website that I can demonstrate this, or know of the code to implement this, please let me know.

I would be most grateful.

Regards,

Karl

[lapuwali]

The traditional way to do this is with Javascript aka ECMAscript, and it's perfectly doable with any programming environment, as Javascript is easy to generate. However, if they're using ActiveX controls, you can do this kind of thing with ActiveX, too. Me, I'd insist on NOT using ActiveX, but using Javascript instead, as that as a better potential for being browser neutral. IE is losing market share to Firefox...

If this is strictly an "in-house" kind of application, then requiring IE is no big deal. If this is going to be a big public website, however, I'd ditch ActiveX. Not only is it IE specific, but it's highly prone to security problems.