Dropdown: Should narrow down/navigate to option on keyboard entry

[jaduong]

Please provide a reproduction of the bug in a codepen:

https://codepen.io/anon/pen/XxKWWE
(always repros)

Bug Report

• Package version(s): 15.6.1
• Browser and OS versions: (fill this out if relevant)

Priorities and help requested:

Are you willing to submit a PR to fix? (Yes, No)

Requested priority: (Blocking, High, Normal, Low) Normal-High

Products/sites affected: (if applicable) Project Roadmap

Describe the issue:

Expect that the dropdown will help select the appropriate item for the user when typing a character.

Actual behavior:

Type "P" in a dropdown, nothing happens.

Expected behavior:

Type "P" in a dropdown, navigates to item in list that starts with "P".

[Vitalius1]

@jaduong I believe we don't have this behavior in the dropdown but we do support this in our ComboBox component. https://codepen.io/vitalius1/pen/LgZVJB here is a quick demo of ComboBox with allowFreeform={true} and autoComplete="on" props doing exactly what you expect.
Let us know if this is what you were looking. Plus there are plenty of other examples here.

@micahgodbolt feels like ComboBox is an improved version of Dropdown. Are we having any plans and solidifying this two under one control?

[micahgodbolt]

We certainly have a desire to consolidate to a single component. It won't be a small feat though, so I'm not sure of the timeframe.

#6030

[jaduong]

@Vitalius1 thanks that's helpful, we need to upgrade but once we do, I guess the ComboBox with freeform = false and autocomplete = on will be sufficient. I'm confused as to the difference between using Combo Box and Dropdown - it feels like Dropdown is incomplete since I can't use my keyboard to type into it.

[micahgodbolt]

I've added this request to #6030. We'll investigate if we're able to add it.

[msft-fluent-ui-bot]

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