User to select one of 500; How?

[bbenjamin]

User is to select one name from a 'list' of 500.

How can that (the list) be best displayed?

(A) Letter links (26) to link to names beginning with that letter?
(😎 Allow the user to enter as much as he/she knows and then query MySQL with that for a listing?
(C) ?????

php/MySQL/Dreamweaver

[wilku]

I'd vote for B using AJAX and some A implementation for those with javascript turned off.

[sandthipe]

if you have well-formed html, a basic <select> form tag will do the trick. order the mysql results alphabetically to make searches easier on the user. when the user starts typing a name, the <select> list will jump to those results.