XF 2.1 Would there be any usability or performance drawbacks to setting up a thread field with thousands of choices?

[Feanor]

I'd like to set up a drop-down thread field with several thousand options. Would there be any drawback to this? If so, I would probably have to use a free text field instead, but I'd rather not.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Would there be any drawback to this?

Annoying your users.

 

[Feanor]

Annoying your users.

Unfortunately XF doesn't have any ability to filter or nest drop downs like you'll see in many website forms, so there's nothing I can about that.

 

[kolakube]

Only performance drawback I can see is loading those thousands of fields on every page load. Not sure if a multiselect script like the following helps on that front, but it does give you a search bar to make finding what you are looking for easy at least. Requires custom development to use of course.

Basic usage | Select2 - The jQuery replacement for select boxes

Select2 is a jQuery based replacement for select boxes. It supports searching, remote data sets, and pagination (infinite scrolling) of results.

select2.org

 

[Max Taxable]

drop-down thread field with several thousand options

Bet that'll be fun for mobile users!

 

[Feanor]

Bet that'll be fun for mobile users!

Damn it.

Only performance drawback I can see is loading those thousands of fields on every page load. Not sure if a multiselect script like the following helps on that front, but it does give you a search bar to make finding what you are looking for easy at least. Requires custom development to use of course.

Basic usage | Select2 - The jQuery replacement for select boxes

Select2 is a jQuery based replacement for select boxes. It supports searching, remote data sets, and pagination (infinite scrolling) of results.

select2.org

What would help more is something like the follow (as an example) -
"Favorite pet breed." User selects "dog" in drop down 1. Drop down 2 now contains choices for "small dog breed, large dog breed." User selects "large." Drop down 3 now contains choices for only the large breed. Compared to jamming everything all into one drop down for the user to scroll through.