One thing we have a problem with from a usability point of view (as do you I realize when entering this enhancement request) is that the number of Component/s / Versions that are available in the drop downs can be very long, making it awkward to actually select components/versions.

I know it is possible to search by typing, but it doesn't work that well in practice any more, as we've had to prepend e.g. our components with a category to make it possible to find anything at all...

I would propose a couple of possible improvements to this, but I'm sure you can think of even better approaches - but to get you started:

1. List browser sizes should be configurable for e.g. "Create issue" screen, allowing them to be bigger - this would be a simple change, but make things much, much better than currently (only seeing 5 items is just not usable, I'd like 10-15 - having this per-user configurable would be one option).

2. Add some more sophisticated search facility that doesn't just to prefix searching, but does full string matching and restricts the displayed results, similar to how iTunes/Spotlight searches work

3. Some sort of favorite history with a separate checkbox to "show all" for the list, with the ability to hide things over time - e.g. I'd only work with very few releases at a given point in time, although there may be a fair amount of historical releases that are still active out at customer sites and thus displayed

The main problem though, is really that the large UI workflow stumble-block, is to find the right item in these lists which can be long (we have the same problem with our "Customer" list where we assign which customer a case affects). Just as a reference, it took me probably 30-60 seconds just to find the right component to file this case for, as I had to slowly scroll through the list.