Given that people find it hard to select from more than around 8 options, the “drop-down selector with live search filter” design pattern is useful for all sorts of situations. If you have a reasonably small number of options, you can do it all client-side. I needed to implement some sort of “search, then select from the matches” selector box for web forms that would use get the server to do the work.

A common need in Domino applications is a way to add one or more users to a list using their Domino IDs, for example to add additional allowed editors to a document. In the Notes client, this is pretty easy — you select “Use Address dialog for choices” in a drop-down, and optionally check the two boxes to turn on autocomplete. Done. In XPages, it’s nowhere near that simple.