

However, you want to leave open the possibility that the list is not complete. Imagine that you want to display a static list of items in a dropdown list. Let's start with a simple sample of using the ComboBox control. Using the AutoComplete extender makes sense when you are working with a large set of data (millions of car parts) while using the ComboBox control makes sense when working with a small set of data (dozens of car parts). The ComboBox control, in contrast, is initialized with a set of items. The AutoComplete extender queries a web service to get matching entries. The ComboBox is similar to the AutoComplete control extender, but the controls are used in different scenarios. You can either select from a pre-existing list of items or enter a new item. The ComboBox works like a combination between a standard ASP.NET DropDownList control and a TextBox control.

The goal of this tutorial is to explain the AJAX Control Toolkit ComboBox control. ComboBox is an ASP.NET AJAX control that combines the flexibility of a TextBox with a list of options from which users can choose.
