Alternative to jQuery Mobile custom select menu, faster or paginated
===

I have a jQuery Mobile application running on iPhone/iPad where `select` tags are generated and can have really large number of options (1000 or more). Also, there can be several selects with exactly the same options defined. A large number of selects, each with a very large number of options quickly causes the `html` page to run slowly and sometimes even crash on the iPad.

A solution that I considered for this kind of scenario is the following: I have **one** select with the large number of items defined and then all the selects that must have these options are replaced by dummy selects. When the user clicks on one of the dummy selects, it is hidden and a jquery `appendTo` is done on the actual select to move it into the place of the hidden select. In this way the dummy select is switched out for the actual select. This principle works except for the fact that after the replacement is done, there is no way to programmatically open the actual select. I have hunted everywhere for a solution to this, and it seem that there [simply isn't a solution][1].

As an alternative, I looked at using jQuery Mobile custom select menu, in other words, selects which have `data-native-menu` attribute set to `false`, as programmatically opening a custom select menu is possible. This does work, but a `jQuery Mobile` custom select with 1000 options takes quite a long time to be displayed on an iPad (about 4 seconds) and then also fairly long to hide as well (about 2 to 3 seconds).

Now I know the obvious solution that will spring to mind is to use `AJAX` to load the information a piece at a time instead of showing all 1000 items at once. Yes, except for one small challenge... the application is available offline (this is a key functionality that cannot be compromised at all), so the entire `html` source must be loaded at once and cannot rely on the server being available after the initial load.

So, what I am looking for is a _select-like_ type control (preferably a jQuery control) that will not look out of place with the jQuery Mobile look and feel. It must work similarly to the jQuery Mobile custom select menu, but must display faster and work better with a large number of items. I am thinking along the lines of a control that instead of showing all the items in the popup, allows pagination of the items displayed with each page being loaded by means of javascript callbacks, and maybe searching/filtering too (am I asking too much?!). Oh, and as is the story for every programmer, I need the solution yesterday! ;) So it must be easy to configure and use.

Does anyone know of a control that could provide the functionality that I require?


[1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6097240/javascript-on-ios-opening-an-html-select-element#comment15125777_6097240