Posted by Gordon Burditt on 04/27/07 04:54

>I'm working on redesigning an ecommerce site written by someone else in the
>near future.
>Currently a user can choose a product group and select items from a returned
>list. I noticed that on many of these groups the number of items to choose
>from topped out at 200, when in fact the actual number of those items could
>be as many as 5000.

At some point user interface considerations can't be papered over with
hardware improvements. Even if you have a large monitor, you shouldn't
try to put 5000 items in a list box. Break them up into subcategories.

I am reminded of an argument I had once with someone who wanted to
use a mouse for everything and saw no use for a keyboard. It's
fine to select a name and phone number from a personal address book.
It is NOT fine to use the same technique for the World Phone Book,
particularly if you think you can fit it all on the screen at once.
I asked this guy to describe how he'd actually scale his design,
with the proviso that he was limited in the size of the monitor he
could use to THAT (I point outside to a nearby 25-story building
occupying most of a city block, completely covered in glass, which
I presumed could have monitors behind it) and make the monitor
resolution as much as he wanted (e.g. a trillion pixels per square
inch) but that he was not allowed to alter the resolution of human
vision.

>Perfectly adequate if you only ever needed items in the lower range of those
>beginning with "a".
>When I asked the owner of the site why this was so, he said the original
>develloper did this to speed things up because it was too slow.
>Fortunately, a customer can access the products they may actualy want via
>other means.
>Finding this was easy, but fixing it has left me scratching my head

Perhaps the "other means" are adequate. Or just preferable.

I'd like to suggest that if you try to put 5000 listbox elements on one
page, the results may be too slow due to browser paging regardless of
what else you do, other than putting fewer of them on each page.

>Acutaly, I _hope_ that's why I'm scratching my head ; @@
>Currently the query selects the top 200 records sorted on the item names.
>Before I dive headlong into this I would be very gratefull to see the
>thoughts of others who know of workable solutions.
>TIA
>Vince
>
>

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