Toggles elements by their title as characters are typed into the text box.

Refactored.js

// The character array as a queue was clever but poorly implemented and unnecessary.
// Instead, just read the query from the input.
// Also handles mouse driven content actions (cut, paste, etc).

$(function() {
  var filter = function(query) {
    var titlesSelector = "#content .show h3 a";
    if (query == '') {
      $(titlesSelector).closest(".show").show(); 
    } else {
      $("#content .show").closest(".show").hide();
      $(titlesSelector + ":contains('" + query + "')").closest(".show").show();
    }
  }
  var h = function(eventData) {
    filter($(this).val().toLowerCase());
  }; 
  $("<input>", {
    "placeholder" : "type to filter by title",
    class: "search",
    keyup: h, 
    focusout: h, 
    mouseleave: h
  }).appendTo("#content h4");
}

ToggleElementsOnScreen.js

// assumes that the title content is lowercase.
// I'm aware of the duplication of some functionality. 
// this is just a POC for the work I'm doing on ccs. :)

var titlesSelector = "#content .show h3 a";

$(function() {
  var characters = new Array();
  $("<input>", {
    "placeholder" : "type to filter by title",
    class: "search",
    keyup: function(eventData) {
      if (eventData.keyCode == 8) {
        characters.pop();
      }
      pattern = characters.join("");
      showSelector = titlesSelector + ":contains('" + pattern + "')";
      hideSelector = titlesSelector + ":not(:contains('" + pattern +"'))";
      $(showSelector).parent().parent().show();
      $(hideSelector).parent().parent().hide();
    },
    keypress: function(eventData) {
      var newChar = String.fromCharCode(eventData.which).toLowerCase();
      characters.push(newChar);
      pattern = characters.join("");
      showSelector = titlesSelector + ":contains('" + pattern +"')";
      hideSelector = titlesSelector + ":not(:contains('" + pattern +"'))";
      $(showSelector).parent().parent().show();
      $(hideSelector).parent().parent().hide();
    }
  }).appendTo("#content h4");
}

This is a little POC I whipped up to filter sessions by title on the CCS sessions index page.

Can you post some example markup to go along with this for context.

Rather than both showing the positive matches AND hiding the negative matches, I think it might be more efficient to hide them all and then show the positive matches. Also, I'd suggest using the literal [] rather than new Array() -- literals are always a safer bet than the initialization equivalents because they actually have quirky differences.

@thegrubbsian even better(?) the code is up live at http://chicagocodecamp.com.