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

StackOverflow https://stackoverflow.com/questions/294040

Question

Maybe this is an easy question, maybe not. I have a select box where I hardcode with width. Say 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 Internet Explorer6.

Was it helpful?

Solution

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 it's 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

OTHER TIPS

I fixed my problem with the following code:

<div style="width: 180px; overflow: hidden;">
   <select style="width: auto;" name="abc" id="10">
     <option value="-1">AAAAAAAAAAA</option>
     <option value="123">123</option>
   </select>
</div>

Hope it helps!

Cheers, Cychan

This mimics most of the behavior your looking for: 

  <!--

     I found this works fairly well.

  -->

  <!-- On page load, be sure that something else has focus. -->
  <body onload="document.getElementById('name').focus();">
  <input id=name type=text>

  <!-- This div is for demonstration only.  The parent container may be anything -->
  <div style="height:50; width:100px; border:1px solid red;">

  <!-- Note: static width, absolute position but no top or left specified, Z-Index +1 -->
  <select
   style="width:96px; position:absolute; z-index:+1;"
   onactivate="this.style.width='auto';"
   onchange="this.blur();"
   onblur="this.style.width='96px';">
  <!-- "activate" happens before all else and "width='auto'" expands per content -->
  <!-- Both making a selection and moving to another control should return static width -->

  <option>abc</option>
  <option>abcdefghij</option>
  <option>abcdefghijklmnop</option>
  <option>abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz</option>

  </select>

  </div>

  </body>

  </html>

This will override some of the key-press behavior.

Place it in a div and give it an id

<div id=myForm>

then create a really really simple css to go with it.

#myForm select { 
width:200px; }

#myForm select:focus {
width:auto; }

That's all you need.

I fixed it in my bootstrap page by setting the min-width and max-width to the same value in the select and then setting the select:focus to auto.

select {
  min-width: 120px;
  max-width: 120px;
}
select:focus {
  width: auto;
}
<select style="width: 120px">
  <option>REALLY LONG TEXT, REALLY LONG TEXT, REALLY LONG TEXT</option>
  <option>ABC</option>
</select>

A simple solution I used for an existing site in IE (using jQuery, but I can post back with eventListener code if you really don't know JS that well) is the following:

if (jQuery.browser.msie) {
  jQuery('#mySelect').focus(function() {
    jQuery(this).width('auto');
  }).bind('blur change', function() {
    jQuery(this).width('100%');
  });
};

Of course, use a variable (var cWidth = jQuery('#mySelect').width();) to store the previous width, but this is all that was required for ours to work as you'd expect.

Sample

function PopulateDropdown() {
    $.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: "../CommonWebService.asmx/GetData",
        data: "{}",
        contentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8",
        dataType: "json",
        success: function (msg) {
            $("select[id^='MyDropDown']").empty();
            $.each(msg.d, function () {
                $("select[id^='MyDropDownSelect']").append($("<option></option>").val(this['IdIndexDataType']).html(this['DataTypeName']));
            }); 
            $("select[id^='MyDropDown']").css("width", "auto");  
        },
        error: function (e1) {
            alert("Error - " + e1.toString());
        }
    });
}

The below code will solve your problem of dropdownlist width by adding this code after insertion of Data to dropdownlist.

$("select[id^='MyDropDown']").css("width", "auto");

Okay, this option is pretty hackish but should work.

$(document).ready( function() {
$('#select').change( function() {
    $('#hiddenDiv').html( $('#select').val() );
    $('#select').width( $('#hiddenDiv').width() );
 }
 }

Which would offcourse require a hidden div.

<div id="hiddenDiv" style="visibility:hidden"></div>

ohh and you will need jQuery

I improved the cychan's solution, to be like that:

<html>
<head>

<style>
    .wrapper{
        display: inline;
        float: left; 
        width: 180px; 
        overflow: hidden; 
    }
    .selectArrow{
        display: inline;
        float: left;
        width: 17px;
        height: 20px;
        border:1px solid #7f9db9;
        border-left: none;
        background: url('selectArrow.png') no-repeat 1px 1px;
    }
    .selectArrow-mousedown{background: url('selectArrow-mousedown.png') no-repeat 1px 1px;}
    .selectArrow-mouseover{background: url('selectArrow-mouseover.png') no-repeat 1px 1px;}
</style>
<script language="javascript" src="jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>

<script language="javascript">
    $(document).ready(function(){
        $('#w1').wrap("<div class='wrapper'></div>");
        $('.wrapper').after("<div class='selectArrow'/>");
        $('.wrapper').find('select').mousedown(function(){
            $(this).parent().next().addClass('selectArrow-mousedown').removeClass('selectArrow-mouseover');
        }).
        mouseup(function(){
            $(this).parent().next().removeClass('selectArrow-mousedown').addClass('selectArrow-mouseover');
        }).
        hover(function(){
            $(this).parent().next().addClass('selectArrow-mouseover');
        }, function(){
            $(this).parent().next().removeClass('selectArrow-mouseover');
        });

        $('.selectArrow').click(function(){
            $(this).prev().find('select').focus();
        });

        $('.selectArrow').mousedown(function(){
            $(this).addClass('selectArrow-mousedown').removeClass('selectArrow-mouseover');
        }).
        mouseup(function(){
            $(this).removeClass('selectArrow-mousedown').addClass('selectArrow-mouseover');
        }).
        hover(function(){
            $(this).addClass('selectArrow-mouseover');
        }, function(){
            $(this).removeClass('selectArrow-mouseover');
        });
    });

</script>
</head>
<body>
    <select id="w1">
       <option value="0">AnyAnyAnyAnyAnyAnyAny</option>
       <option value="1">AnyAnyAnyAnyAnyAnyAnyAnyAnyAnyAnyAnyAnyAny</option>
    </select>

</body>
</html>

The PNGs used in css classes are uploaded here...

And you still need JQuery.....

you can try and solve using css only. by adding class to select 

select{ width:80px;text-overflow:'...';-ms-text-overflow:ellipsis;position:absolute; z-index:+1;}
select:focus{ width:100%;}

for more reference List Box Style in a particular item (option) HTML

Multi Select List Box

Very old question but here's the solution. Here you have a working snippet using jquery. It makes use of a temporary auxiliary select into which the selected option from the main select is copied, such that one can assess the true width which the main select should have.

$('select').change(function(){
  var text = $(this).find('option:selected').text()
  var $aux = $('<select/>').append($('<option/>').text(text))
  $(this).after($aux)
  $(this).width($aux.width())
  $aux.remove()
})
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<select>
  <option>REALLY LONG TEXT, REALLY LONG TEXT, REALLY LONG TEXT</option>
  <option>ABC</option>
</select>

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