How to make jqueryui autocomplete use just one list (ul) for all textboxes in page

Question

I have the problem where I have around 30 textboxes and they all require autocomplete. I noticed jqueryui creates one result list (ul) for each textbox, adding more markup and events to my already heavy page. Is there a simple and clean way of extending the jqueryui autocomplete widget so that all textboxes use the same result list?

Answer 1

Is there a simple and clean way...

Nope, you'd have to rewrite some pretty fundamental parts of the plugin for this to work, there's no "quick fix" to make this work. Also, several aspects like being shown with a callback, etc rely on each autocomplete instance having its own list.