Using firebug, I'm able to determine that the regex used in $.Autocompleter.defaults highlight parameter function is faulty and doing a character by character replacement of itself prepended by <strong></strong> when var term is empty. For example we expect:

<ul style="overflow: auto; max-height: 180px;">

<li class="ac_even ac_over">

<strong>FooBar</strong>

</li>

</ul>

But instead we get:

<ul style="overflow: auto; max-height: 180px;">

<li class="ac_even ac_over">

<strong/>

F

<strong/>

o

<strong/>

o

<strong/>

B

<strong/>

a

<strong/>

r

<strong/>

</li>

</ul>

Suggested code edit starting at line 408:

highlight: function(value, term) {

if ("" != term) {

return value.replace(new RegExp("(?![^&;]+;)(?!<[^<>]*)(" + term.replace(/([\\^\\$\\(\\)\\[\\]\\{\\}\\*\\.\\+\\?\\|\\\\])/gi, "\\\\$1") + ")(?![^<>]*>)(?![^&;]+;)", "gi"), "<strong>$1</strong>");

} else {

return value;

}