How to expand 'select' option width after the user wants to select an option?

Question

Maybe this is an easy question, maybe not. I have a <select> box where I hardcode the width to 120px:

<select style="width: 120px">
  <option>REALLY LONG TEXT, REALLY LONG TEXT, REALLY LONG TEXT</option>
  <option>ABC</option>
</select>

I want to be able to show the second option so that the user can see the full length of the text.

Like everything else. This works fine in Firefox, but doesn't work with other browsers for me.

Answer 1

If you have the option pre-existing in a fixed-with <select>, and you don't want to change the width programmatically, you could be out of luck unless you get a little creative.

• You could try and set the title attribute to each option. This is non-standard HTML (if you care for this minor infraction here), but IE (and Firefox as well) will display the entire text in a mouse popup on mouse hover.
• You could use JavaScript to show the text in some positioned DIV when the user selects something. IMHO this is the not-so-nice way to do it, because it requires JavaScript on to work at all, and it works only after something has been selected - before there is a change in value no events fire for the select box.
• You don't use a select box at all, but implement its functionality using other markup and CSS. Not my favorite but I wanted to mention it.

If you are adding a long option later through JavaScript, look here: How to update HTML “select” box dynamically in IE