The dynamic artist drop down is used throughout the site to select artist names. It replaces traditional select lists which have been around since the late 90s.

Why: There are over 25,000 artists listed in db. Loading all 25,000 of them a million times a day strains the database and bandwidth used by db.

Navigating: The left and right arrows will scroll a page of artist-results at a time. Up and down will select artists from the list. When the desired artist is highlighted, hit Tab to select it and move to the next field.

Prefixing: To simplify searching for artists which may prefix their name with The, A, An, la, le, or l', these words are removed from your query when your search is executed. We at db have always struggled with the best implementation for artistical navigation and your feedback to db@etree.org about this feature is appreciated.

Problems: Some users reported problems using this. Most can't select an artist at all. This happens if:

• Javascript is turned off. Turn it on.
• You type too fast and hit enter before the list loads. Slow down. Once you see how it works, you won't have trouble any more.

Sometimes the wrong artist is selected. Like, really, really wrong. This is usually a one-time problem. Just reload the page or try again. It happens if:

• Your mouse is over the area where the dynamic list appears, the entry under the pointer will be selected first.
• You type something at the end of a valid artist name, like grateful dead5.
• You use Internet Explorer and a mouse, clicking on an entry sometimes doesn't select it as intended. Using the keyboard seems to work every time. Go ask Bill Gates why, we don't know. Or use a [different browser].

Sometimes, *no* artist is selected, and you'll see every performance on the chosen date. This happens a lot with moe. for some reason. Just slow down and try again.

Accented characters: Accented characters are normalized to the standard alphabet where possible. So to find Mötley Crue you can just type Motley Crue and Mötley Crue will come up at the top of the search results.

How does it work?: An implementation of script.aculo.us' autocompleting field. After about half a second of not typing, your browser makes an ajax request to db with what you've typed. db then matches it as best it can to the artist list. If it cannot match it, it strips the last letter from what you've typed and tries again. db repeats this process until it finds something.