Slow performance DropDownList and Combobox

[Thomas]

These are great controls... I need some help getting the best performance.

In the application, I have a Combobox (the same is true for a DropDownList, AutoComplete), as a <select> <option>. All works well with smaller list. Some of the Combobox have over 5000 items, and take 30 to 40 seconds to open. In internet explorer 8, it may not open at all. Unfortunately my user default browser is ie8. 

What is the best setup for performance? There is a lot of processing occurring on the initial click event, can that be triggered ahead of time? It needs to perform as well as an html select....

Thanks

[Georgi Krustev]

Hello Thomas,

 
The DropDownList widget creates list of object besed on the select's option elements. DropDownList also creates option elements of the select element in order to handle all possible scenarios of data binding. I will suggest you create a DropDownList from input element and pass the data as JSON. This will be the fast databinding. If you are OK with slower initial load, then you can set the autoBind:true. Thus the widgets will render there items initially. Please note that the SELECT element is a native control and it is hard for any widget to perform like it.
I attached a simple test project, which shows different possible implementations of DropDwonList.

Kind regards,
Georgi Krustev
the Telerik team