Select Menus

Select menus

• Basics
• Options
• Methods
• Events

The select menu is based on a native select element, which is hidden from view and replaced with a custom-styled select button that matches the look and feel of the jQuery Mobile framework. The select menu is ARIA-enabled and keyboard accessible on the desktop as well. View the data- attribute reference to see all the possible attributes you can add to selects.

By default, the framework leverages the native OS options menu to use with the custom button. When the button is clicked, the native OS menu will open. When a value is selected and the menu closes, the custom button's text is updated to match the selected value. Please note that the framework also offers the possibility of having custom (non-native) select menus; see details at the bottom of this page and on the custom select menu page.

To add a select menu to your page, start with a standard select element populated with a set of option elements. Set the for attribute of the label to match the id of the select so they are semantically associated. It's possible to accessibly hide the label if it's not desired in the page layout, but we require that it is present in the markup for semantic and accessibility reasons.

The framework will find all select elements and automatically enhance them into select menus; there is no need to apply a data-role attribute. To prevent the automatic enhancement of a select, add data-role="none" attribute to the select.

<label for="select-choice-0" class="select">Shipping method:</label>
<select name="select-choice-0" id="select-choice-0">
   <option value="standard">Standard: 7 day</option>
   <option value="rush">Rush: 3 days</option>
   <option value="express">Express: next day</option>
   <option value="overnight">Overnight</option>
</select>

This will produce a basic select menu. The default styles set the width of the input to 100% of the parent container and stacks the label on a separate line.

Mini version

For a more compact version that is useful in toolbars and tight spaces, add the data-mini="true" attribute to the element to create a mini version.

	
<label for="select-choice-min" class="select">Shipping method:</label>
<select name="select-choice-min" id="select-choice-min" data-mini="true">
   <option value="standard">Standard: 7 day</option>
   <option value="rush">Rush: 3 days</option>
   <option value="express">Express: next day</option>
   <option value="overnight">Overnight</option>
</select> 

This will produce a select that a not as tall as the standard version and has a smaller text size.

Field containers

Optionally wrap the selects in a container with the data-role="fieldcontain" attribute to help visually group it in a longer form.

<div data-role="fieldcontain">
   <label for="select-choice-1" class="select">Shipping method:</label>
   <select name="select-choice-1" id="select-choice-1">
      <option value="standard">Standard: 7 day</option>
      <option value="rush">Rush: 3 days</option>
      <option value="express">Express: next day</option>
      <option value="overnight">Overnight</option>
   </select>
</div>

The select input is now displayed like this:

An example of a select with a long list of options:

Optgroups

The following example organizes the options into optgroup elements. Support for this feature in mobile selects is a bit spotty, but is improving.

Vertically grouped select inputs

To create a grouped set of select inputs, first add select and a corresponding label. Set the for attribute of the label to match the id of the select so they are semantically associated.

Because the label element will be associated with each individual select input, we recommend wrapping the selects in a fieldset element that has a legend which acts as the combined label for the grouped inputs.

Lastly, one needs to add the data-role="controlgroup" attribute to the fieldset, so it will be styled as a group.

	
<div data-role="fieldcontain">
    <fieldset data-role="controlgroup">
        <legend>Date of Birth:</legend>
    
        <label for="select-choice-month">Month</label>
        <select name="select-choice-month" id="select-choice-month">
            <option>Month</option>
            <option value="jan">January</option>
            <!-- etc. -->
        </select>
    
        <label for="select-choice-day">Day</label>
        <select name="select-choice-day" id="select-choice-day">
            <option>Day</option>
            <option value="1">1</option>
            <!-- etc. -->
        </select>
    
        <label for="select-choice-year">Year</label>
        <select name="select-choice-year" id="select-choice-year">
            <option>Year</option>
            <option value="2011">2011</option>
            <!-- etc. -->
        </select>
        
    </fieldset>
</div>

Horizontally grouped select inputs

Select inputs can also be used for grouped sets with more than one related selection. To make a horizontal button set, add the data-type="horizontal" to the fieldset. Note that the buttons which trigger the select will resize depending on the currently selected option's value. Note that browsers without support for display: inline-block; will group the selects vertically, as above.

Calling the select menu plugin

The select menu plugin will auto initialize on any page that contains a select menu, without any need for a data-role attribute in the markup. However, you can directly call the select menu plugin on any selector, just like any normal jQuery plugin:

$('select').selectmenu();