OK. The same interface is in my digital cable TV box. I can browse the list of shows, but cannot search for all shows with "Star" in the name. Scrolling through all the S programs is time-consuming and shows that don't even start with S cannot be searched - making it a lame design, not matter how common.
The windows xp add/remove programs also presents a list - no search tool, no filter ability - we are forced to sit their while it takes seemingly forever to appear. Lame. Ok, here's the only way I know how to respond. (I'm trying to limit "self-promotion", but I"m gonna reference one of my CoDe articles)
My personal email is an AT&T email. When I'm on the road and want to check it, the browser interface isn't very good. If I have a long list of emails and I want to go to the person with a last name of 'S'....I need to go to the end, and click BACK....BACK....BACK.... OK,
THAT is LAME!!!! ;)
But that's really independant of whether sprocs were used or not. It's just not a powerful design.
So I wrote an article in Code...
http://www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0703041It shows how to implement custom paging, quick lookup capabilities, and variable searches, all with a stored proc. I agree, one key to a good UI is helping people "get to" their data without a long sequence of keystrokes.
Kevin
