JQuery UI Dialog slow

Question

I've recently ran into a bit of a pain. I've been using the JQuery Dialog box to display some configuration screens in a web app. Nothing too special. However I have a couple edge cases where this config form will display a drop down of some... 11000 options. [DODGES ROTTEN TOMATOES]

Needless to say, it's slow. It can take up to 9 seconds for the JQuery Dialog to show (and the init is slow as well).

First question is: Is there a way to speed up the Dialog boxes? From what it seems, it copies all the content each time it opens. If there was a way to avoid that, it would help a bit.

Second question: Are there any other jQuery Dialog boxes that perform better when being asked to display large amounts of data?

And as always, other solutions are welcome. Some autocomplete ajax wouldn't be bad, but probably still be slow unless it required at least a couple initial characters.

Answer 1

I've face this problem and found the solution here: http://forum.jquery.com/topic/select-in-dialog-causes-slowness-in-ie8

Just had to set the dialog draggable and resizable options to false.

Answer 2

How about one select with all possible first letters getting via AJAX only options beginning with that letter into the second select?