<p>I'm struggling with a problem with the Script.aculo.us Autocompleter control in IE (I've tried it in IE6 &amp; 7). The suggestions fail to appear for the first character is entered into the text box after the page has been loaded. After that initial failure, the control works as it should.</p>

<p>I've verified that the suggestions data is returned from the server correctly; the problem appears to have something to do with the positioning of the suggestions element, as other relatively positioned elements on the page move out of position at the moment that you'd expect the suggestions to appear.</p>

<p>Has anyone heard of such a problem or have any suggestions on how to fix it?</p>

<p>Edit: In response to Chris, I have set the partialChars parameter to 1 and the control works in all the other browsers I've tried, which are the latest versions of Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome. I should probably have made that clear in the first place. Thanks.</p>

Is your problem just in IE, or in all browsers?  Ignoring the first char is actually the default for the Autocompleter.  In controls.js, there's a class called Autocompleter.Local which has a field called partialChars which defaults to 2.  The docs for that field say:
// - partialChars - How many characters to enter before triggering
//                   a partial match (unlike minChars, which defines
//                   how many characters are required to do any match
//                   at all). Defaults to 2.