Drop-down list fields

Understanding the Web

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Parts of an HTML page

Structure of an HTML Document

Creating and viewing a WEB PAGE

Text formatting in HTML

Organising information using lists

Structure content with tables

Data collection with forms

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Displaying images

Drop-down lists are a great way to give users lots of options in a small amount of screen space.

You use two tags to create a drop-down list:

<select> creates the list. Use a name attribute with the <select> element to name your list.
A collection of <option> elements identifies individual list options. The value attribute assigns a unique value for each <option> element.

Here’s a markup example for a drop-down list:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
  </head>
  <body>
    <form method="post">
      <p>What is your favorite food?</p>
      <select name="food">
        <option value="pizza">Pizza</option>
        <option value="icecream">Ice Cream</option>
        <option value="eggsham">Green Eggs and Ham</option>
      </select>
    </form>    
  </body>
</html>

What is your favorite food?

Pizza Ice Cream Green Eggs and Ham

The browser turns this markup into a drop-down list with three items.

You can also enable users to select more than one item from a drop-down list by changing the default settings of your list:

If you want your users to be able to choose more than one option (by holding down the Ctrl [Windows] or ⌘ [Mac] key while clicking options in the list), add the multiple attribute to the <select> tag. The value of multiple is multiple. If you give a stand-alone attribute a value, that value must be the same as the name for the attribute itself (that is, both multiple and multiple=”multiple” are legal).
By default, the browser displays only one option until the user clicks the drop-down menu arrow to display the rest of the list. Use the size attribute with the <select> tag to specify how many options to show. If you specify fewer than the total number of options, the browser includes a scroll bar with the drop-down list.

You can specify that one of the options in the drop-down list be already selected when the browser loads the page, just as you can specify a check box or radio button to be selected. Simply add the selected attribute for the <option> tag you want as the default. Use this when one choice is very likely, knowing that users can override your default selection quickly and easily.