Qaulity Standards for Maximum no of items in SELECT tag

[S Santosh Kumar]

Can anybody tell me what should be the maximum number of items in select t tag in JSP/HTML?
Suppose I'm giving 10,000 items, then isn't the browser will be overloaded and network utilization will be more.
Thnx in advance.

[Bear Bibeault]

What's equally important is at what point the user overloads. Is it really useful to return that much data to the user?

[Jeroen Wenting]

In such cases it may be better to provide the data in another way.
Maybe split it up in logical subgroups which the user is presented with first after which only the items belonging to that subgroup are shown.
Of course there may be no such division possible with your data, in which case you are basically suckered :roll:

[S Santosh Kumar]

In my organization, We've 20,000 employees. At many places, I've to give select list for selecting employee.
Is it advisable to have SELECT fields there for such a huge data.
Should I give only staffno as entry to be made ( of course not from list) ??

[Winston Smith]

I think a SELECT is certainly out of the question. I would seperate the employees into logical, manageable units (as suggested in a previous post), and display these units. For instance, you may break it down by departments, divisions, branches, etc. Whatever your company, I'm sure it has some type of organizational units. Once the user selects a department, you can display a scrollable table of employees in alphabetical order, but also provide the user with the ability to search, so they can quickly find the employee they're looking for.

[Bear Bibeault]

Or provide search filters that narrow down the results list.

[Jeroen Wenting]

in your case, take several selects. For example, split them up by department (or even finer).
Search function also helps. Let users search on department, first name and/or last name and present a separate page with all matching names (paginated if needed). User clicks a name and that gets shot into the application proper.

[S Santosh Kumar]

Yes, department wise logical separation is possible. However it will increase the screen size and activity from user end. But it seems this is the only way to get through. Thanks.

[Jeroen Wenting]

I wouldn't increase screensize if you push the selection into a popup window.
Say give the user a chance to enter an employee name or number and a button. If (s)he presses the button the popup appears with your dropdowns (possibly using any entered value as search criteria).
On making a selection from the department list, the popup reloads and fills the second list with employees for that department.
On making a selection there and pressing a button, the values from the popup are stored by a piece of Javascript in the main screen (for example in that edit box and maybe a hidden field).

[Eric Pascarello]

I would say do a double combo script
dropdown1 - dropdown2
dropdown one contains department listings or alphabetical ranges (A-D;E-G)
you post back to the server and fill the second dropdown..you can use JavaScript to fill the second one too if you do not want to post back.
Eric

[S Santosh Kumar]

Thanks Eric and Jeroen for your valuable inputs.
Santosh