Would it be possible to implement the EmptyListItem functionality as seen in GridDropDownColumn also in the RadComboBox control?
With the GridDropDownColumn, you can add this:
EnableEmptyListItem="true" EmptyListItemText="(select project)" EmptyListItemValue="" |
With the ComboBox you can set Text="(select item)" but that disappears after you select an item, or you can manually add a first item and then set AppendDataBoundItems="true" but that's not as elegant as above.