criteria search function

Hey all,

I am designing a site that has a lot of information listed on one page.

I would like to create a criteria search at the top of the page to leave only the listins relevent to the search.

First of all can this be done with Javascript??????????????
I would prefer if it could because i am totally hopeless with asp, sql, php etc.

So you can understand what im looking at ill describe it.
There will be a listing of accomodation on the page. (They can be listed any way neccessary, tables, text etc)

I would like a form at the top where a user can select options such as

location
cost
star rating etc etc

Can this be done?????

Thankyou so much to any body that helps. Im becoming desperate.

A Google search came up with

http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?id=2887

thanx for that. much appreciated