I'm strugling with this same control and the same issue of setting an initial value.
The control doesn't have the same properties anymore, specifically SelectedItem has been replaced by SelectedOptions, of type DropDownOption List.
The only way I've found so far is to declare a local DropDownOption List variable, and assign a value to it's first element, and then process the OnChanged event. This works, but is very tedious, especially with multiple DropDownSearch controls on the same form...
Is there a better way to handle this now ?
