Hello, my name is Taylor Hughes.

I spent some free time over a weekend recently writing my own Prototype-based JavaScript autocompleter. Holding out hope that someone else could find it useful, I’ve created a Google Code project for it — check it out!

InstantAutocompleter handles matching within a single keystroke event and doesn’t wait around to appear, so your choices come up immediately. Further, the first choice may or may not be selected by default, and you can also adjust matching patterns and token separators as regular expressions for autocompletion of items in a list.

The obvious choice for this sort of thing in the Prototype-and-script.aculo.us realm is Autocompleter.Local, a control that ships with script.aculo.us. But I found it clunky and occasionally intrusive: it takes a bit to show up, and it can get in the way if it falls behind and provides a match after you’re already done. InstantAutocompleter is meant as a replacement for Autocompleter.Local and should be even easier to use by both end-users and programmers alike.

(Some of the event-handling code takes vague cues from Autocompleter.Base, so thanks to the developers who put that package together.)

Give InstantAutocompleter a shot over at the InstantAutocompleter demo page, or visit the project page to find out more.