The Option element can only occur within a <SELECT> element. It represents one choice, and can take the following attributes. The contents of the Option element is presented to the user to represent the option. It is used as a returned value if the VALUE attribute is not present.

SELECTED
Indicates that this option is initially selected.

VALUE
When present indicates the value to be returned if this option is chosen. The returned value defaults to the contents of the Option element.

NAME
The NAME attribute is used to set the name of the <OPTION> element that is sent as the name/value pair when the form is submitted.

TITLE="informational ToolTip"
The Internet Explorer 4.0 (and above) specific TITLE attribute is used for informational purposes. If present, the value of the TITLE attribute is presented as a ToolTip when the users mouse hovers over the <OPTION> section.

LANG="language setting"
The LANG attribute can be used to specify what language the <DIR> element is using. It accepts any valid ISO standard language abbreviation (for example "en" for English, "de" for German etc.) For more details, see the Document Localisation section for more details.

LANGUAGE="Scripting language"
The LANGUAGE attribute can be used to expressly specify which scripting language Internet Explorer 4.0 uses to interpret any scripting information used in the <OPTION> element. It can accept values of vbscript, vbs, javascript or jscript. The first two specify the scripting language as Visual Basic Script, the latter two specify it as using Javascript (the default scripting language used if no LANGUAGE attribute is set.

CLASS="Style Sheet class name"
The CLASS attribute is used to specify the <OPTION> element as using a particular style sheet class. See the Style Sheets topic for details.

STYLE="In line style setting"
As well as using previously defined style sheet settings, the <OPTION> element can have in-line stylings attached to it. See the Style Sheets topic for details.

ID="Unique element identifier"
The ID attribute can be used to either reference a unique style sheet identifier, or to provide a unique name for the <OPTION> element for scripting purposes. Any <OPTION> element with an ID attribute can be directly manipulated in script by referencing its ID attribute, rather than working through the All collection to determine the element. See the Scripting introduction topic for more information.

Every <OPTION> element in a document is an object that can be manipulated through scripting. Scripting of the <OPTION> element is supported by both browsers (Netscape supports scripting through the Forms collection/array and Elements collection. See those topics for details of Netscape support for scripting the <OPTION> element.)

<OPTION...> Properties
Of the the standard Dynamic HTML properties, the <OPTION...> element/object supports className, document, id, isTextEdit, lang, language, offsetHeight, offsetLeft, offsetParent, offsetTop, offsetWidth, parentElement, parentTextEdit, sourceIndex, style, tagName and title. Details of these can be found in the standard Dynamic HTML properties topics.
Additionally, the <OPTION> element supports the name, selected, text, type and value properties, which directly reflect the attributes of the same name. The text property can be used to set, or retrieve the text of the option chosen (i.e. the text presented to the user). The value property represents (or sets), the 'internal' value that is sent by the <OPTION> element when the form is submitted - therefore it doesn't affect the displayed list.

<OPTION...> Methods
The <OPTION...> element/object supports all of the standard Dynamic HTML methods (i.e. click, contains, getAttribute, insertAdjacentHTML, insertAdjacentText, removeAttribute, scrollIntoView and setAttribute). Details of these can be found in the standard Dynamic HTML Methods topics.

<OPTION...> Events
The <OPTION...> element/object doesn't support any events.

© 1995-1998, Stephen Le Hunte

Code:

  .