[IxDA Discuss] Better name for "Seeking" in lists

[Jaime Guerrero]

the general term is "incremental search"

generally defined as a system where every keystroke (adding a character 
to the search string) executes a search and shows the results of that 
search, so that as typing proceeds, the results narrow down further and 
further.  Due to the uniqueness of many words, often, only a few letters 
are necessary to be typed, which makes incremental searching potentially 
much faster than, for example, typing out an entire word and only then 
"executing" the search.


a great demonstration of the 'classic' design for incremental search 
(using Ajax technology) is on GoogleSuggest
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

also the Find feature in Mozilla Firefox (Edit->Find in Page) implements 
a version of incremental search for text documents

it's only partially implemented (first letter only) in most Browsers' 
list-box and drop-down controls (<select> tag), so it doesn't really 
solve the problem there except for short lists.


jackbellis.com wrote:

>In various lists, is there a name for the system behavior in which the list automatically scrolls to and highlights the item that begins with a letter or letters you type?
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