Improved Category Selector

I have known an improved category selector was necessary for a long time. As the category list grew longer it was simply too tedious to wade through all the possibilities. Once again thanks and appreciation to my friend Peter for inspiring me to get busy and tackle this item.

The new improved category is now composed of two parts:

1. A top textbox where you can simply start typing in whatever it is you want to find. The textbox uses auto suggest to help you rapidly arrive at the desired category.


2. The old drop down list box. Sometimes we might not really know what we are interested in, so this allows users to browse all the available categories.

If the dropdown is utilized, it will automatically populate the textbox above.
If after using the dropdown you use the textbox before clicking "Perform ProximityCast" the textbox will show a different category than the dropdown. The textbox entry will be the category utilized to perform the search.

Minor Bug

There is a minor bug with the auto suggest tool. If you type very fast, such as "fo" ford will appear twice and the other fo???? possibilities will not be shown. Sorry for this hopefully minor inconvenience.

Credits

A three part article by Nicholas C. Zakas helped me get over the hump to create the autosuggest textbox. Much appreciation Nicholas! I looked high and low for a reference I liked. Your's proved to be straight forward, clear and easy to implement. Thank you!
By the way, take a look at Nicholas's website and it is easy to tell that he is high energy and very talented!

Till next time,
ciao my friends!