Autocomplete Fields instead of Dropdown Menus for Academics

[kylegracey]

I'm sure this is probably a pretty big pain, but I want to bring up the argument for replacing dropdown menus with autocomplete fields for things like classes and service orgs (See also #480 ).

There are 3 major things autocomplete fields do for us

• Design. Yes they look cleaner. This is super minor.
• Experience. It's SUCH a better experience for the user. Not only does it merge two steps into one, but it's also intuitive and avoids the need to search through a list of previously created items and figuring out if you've put it in already or not.
• Data. The easier experience means we will get better data from the user. Related information between users/schools/whatever will be so much easier to facilitate with autocomplete, again pointing to #480.

Those just scrape the surface. Yes it does open us up a little bit to duplicates. But the benefits FAR outweigh that slight annoyance, and they would apply basically anywhere we get data from the user.

[ttapers]

From #359 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/12/08/principles-of-effective-e-commerce-search/

[ttapers]

I want this everywhere.

[ttapers]

A good first shot is probably the fix for #480

[ttapers]

angular-ui bootstrap typeahead. boom.

Somewhat relevant: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21891229/search-box-in-angular-js

[kylegracey]

This works so great on Service hours. Makes things so much easier. Thank you!

Just throwing out a few other places these would be nice to have. No idea what implications it has on the backend.

• Grades widget when you're entering classes. (It would be great to have classes be related too. Thats probably even more challenging than service hours were).
• Extracurricular activity titles
• Maybe Extracurricular leadership roles? Like "Captain"? What do you think? Too much?

[neelbhat88]

Typeahead is being used on the Service and EC pages. Academics is the only one left for this one