Shoutbox

ok i give up... anyway, i didn't say that it was you to say it is a bad idea...
the only thing, i wasn't absolutely talking about a script: i know that jscript is slow! absorbation himself said it could be good if directly implemented in Plus!, and that's what i'm talking about... and i think (at least in languages i use that is) that string manipulation is not slower than image manipulation (emos can also be 32bpp images, even if they are small, load and display lots of them is slower than adding the corresponding string entries in a listbox).
Also, i dunno how searching in winamp jump to file dialog is implemented (i repeat this example, because it shows clearly that it is possible to have a very quick solution) but it's very smooth. So, if i say that i think it can be a cpu-lightweight operation, i mean that: if somebody managed to do it, you can do it. It could be a hard result to achieve, that's another problem; but *it can be done*, and also in an efficient way. That's it.
Try to read carefully what i said, i'm not a fool.. i repeat you that i'm a programmer (maybe not a good one) and i have an idea of what can and what cannot be done... at least before saying me it can't try to do it! as i said in my last post you already have a sound search box that is very near to what i mean, and it doesn't seem to be deadly slow... i have lots of sounds, and it's efficient! The problem is only the "quick" emo panel....

Last resource: why don't you load cached emos previews in a separate thread in the bg, so when you need them they are ready? (maybe it's already doing it, i dunno... i'm just suggesting)