I've recently run into a problem where too many drop down lists on a page have resulted in performance issues. I was just wondering if changing these dropdownlists to inputs would remedy the situation at all?
I was thinking of using the spinner jquery UI plugin as an alernative.
Any suggestions? thanks in advance
Shawn
If you rely entirely on JavaScript, what happens if a request fails, or someone browses the site on a mobile device or has JavaScript disabled?
If you have many drop down lists that have a lot of data in each one, maybe you could change the website flow to ask for less at once? It's difficult to say without knowing the specifics.
I think AJAX should be used to progressively enhance the page, rather than as a fundamental component to access the functionality.
I would not see text inputs as an alternative to dropdowns because they differ a lot in user experience.
Dropdown lists are rendered natively by the browser interface and therefore should not be a DOM rendering bottleneck. Are you sure that they were the reason of the problem? How much of them did you have? Tens, hundreds, thousands?
Could you show us the page you are talking about?