We originally envisioned many of the lookup inputs to behave like autocomplete / google suggest drop down searches. However, due to a couple of issues they no longer act like proper autocomplete inputs:

1) People want the search to be relatively fuzzy. So a search for 'Bug' should find 'The Bug', a search for 'Lee Jung Hyun' should find '이정현', etc.. whereas an autocomplete would typically be a rather strict LIKE 'foo%' search, this is much fuzzier.

2) In many cases you're editing an existing entity, for which the inputs are already filled in, and with an autocomplete input there is no obvious way to start searching..

3) For recordings and artists we have so many entities that each search result needs to contain a fair amount of additional information to be able to distinguish results... e.g. recording can include ISRC, disambig comment, and which releases the recording appears on. Artist includes a disambig comment and sometimes the sort name (certain users probably want one or more of birth year, gender, type and country included too).

Of those issues, 1) is already solved because the inputs use the regular direct search or the indexed search, either way it uses Data::Search now.. and no longer acts like an autocomplete.

Issue 2) can probably be solved by adding a little search icon in or next to these inputs, either in addition to the search-as-you-type autocomplete/suggest behaviour or just make it a regular search entirely.

Issue 3) needs be to fixed eventually, but I think the current result lists will suffice for the NGS release.