Adding an autofill option and anchored filters to the autocomplete plugin

Adding an autofill option and anchored filters to the autocomplete plugin

I propose a couple of new features for the autocomplete plugin.

First, add the option to do the text filtering based on the first characters in the source instead of the character string contained in the source.

Secondly, add an autoFill option so that the first selection will auto-populate into the input box, with the portion of that option not already typed created as a selection. When the user types in the next character, the selected portion will immediately disappear as part of the keyDown event.

These two options increase my productivity when assigning image names from a pre-populated list of stock image names and allows me to select the first item by clicking Tab without having to arrow down.

I have implemented these two changes into my local copy of the jQuery UI autocomplete plugin. I will include the source file that I altered with this post. All code added or altered has a comment after it starting with " // CHRIS TILLMAN -  " to indicate it is my code.