[tfountain]

Actually the solution you're suggesting is one of my pet hates. An alphabetical list of countries should be alphabetical! If you put some countries out of order you just make it more difficult for people to find their country if theirs isn't the one pre-selected.

If your audience is mainly US, then by all means pre-select the US, but keep the list alphabetical. If your audience isn't mainly in one country, either don't select anything, or for extra bonus points, do a Geo IP lookup and pre-select the country they're in.

[itsybitsycoder]

I think one of the worst things I've seen is the State/Province version of this. I try to scroll down to "B" for "British Columbia" but lo and behold, there's nothing listed between Arkansas and California. I double-check the country dropdown... still says Canada. Yeah, the genius web developer decided to list all 50 US states before the Canadian provinces, regardless of what country was selected.