ravi, matthew, thanks for the responses, and i totally agree that this group is huge. Google could have added a few more features to their groips app. this is very barebones:(
here is what im doing, i've been using this (http://remysharp.com/2007/09/18/auto-populate- multiple-select-boxes/) plugin to chain several multiple select boxes where the input from the previous populates values in the next. so far with lots of tweaks and additions it seems to be doing what i want. i have it selecting all values from the next box each time one or more values from the current box is selected. I'd like to add a select all option to the head of each list that would automatically select all options when selected. sounds trivial, but this is my first jquery/ajax project