(I was going to post an image but I don't have enough reputation, so here's the link of the website: http://www.galco.com/)
I'm redesigning a website and one thing the CEO of the company liked was the fact that the previous designer made a search feature that displayed every brand or product (there are a LOT of brands and products) by the first letter of the alphabet simply by hovering over the first letter of the name. Personally, I think the concept is nice, but the fact that the bar is always there seems a bit excessive and takes up quite a bit of space. I brought up the approach that newegg (http://www.newegg.com/ProductSort/BrandList.aspx?Depa=0&name=All-Brands) uses, which is a single button that takes you to another page, but he insisted that the users should have the ability to have this feature everywhere they are on the site and it would reduce the number of SEO keywords on the home page.
Does anyone have a solution to this situation? Either a nice/clean way to incorporate the alphabet (I can't find any any examples anywhere) or a damn good reason to completely drop it and take the newegg approach?