Setting the Number of Items Visible in a Select List

By Stephen Bucaro

An HTML Select list is a form control used to create a drop-down list of items from which the user can select. Each item in a select list is defined by an option element. The select list can appear as a drop-down list as shown below.

Or, by setting its size property it can appear as a scrolling list, displaying more than one item at a time. The select list below shows three items because its size attribute is set to 3.

<select size="3">
<option value="Bread">Bread</option>
<option value="Coffee">Coffee</option>
<option value="Pie">Pie</option>
<option value="Salad">Salad</option>
<option value="Soup">Soup</option>
</select>

If you set the size attribute to the number of items in the list, the list it will appear as an open list with no scrollbar, as shown below.

<select size="5">
<option value="Bread">Bread</option>
<option value="Coffee">Coffee</option>
<option value="Pie">Pie</option>
<option value="Salad">Salad</option>
<option value="Soup">Soup</option>
</select>

Note: When setting size to number of items in list, in Gecko-based browsers like Firefox and Chrome, the scrollbar is grayed out. In Internet Explorer the scrollbar is totally hidden.

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