>>I'm working on a small app that has contacts down the left side, similar to this http://www.plaxo.com/tour
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>>The problem is that I'm importing close to 2000 contacts, and it's taking forever to load. I need suggestions on how to do this.
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>So are you writing a web app ?
>IAC pulling 2000 items into a list, apart from being slow, will also not be much use to a user. Even pulling by first letter would average more than 100 items - probably still too much. Without more info it's hard to know what to suggest - except using a straight-forward user entered search value and/or loading say 50 at a time with a previous/next option .....

No sorry, it's a WinForms app

Thing is, they'e doing on this site. While I agree that I may need to find an alternative way to load - how are they doing it?

One thing I could do is download all the data into a DS, then do some kind of paging with the PgUp/PgDown key. I'd have to find a way to load a pagen when the user scrolls.