Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference

Name

<OPTION> — NN all IE all HTML all

Synopsis

<OPTION>...</OPTION>

End Tag: Optional

The OPTION element defines an item that appears in a SELECT element listing, whether the listing is in a pop-up menu or scrolling list. OPTION elements associated with a SELECT element must be nested within the start and end tags of the SELECT element.

SELECT elements supply name/value pairs when the element is submitted as part of a FORM element. Typically, the NAME attribute of the SELECT element and the VALUE attribute of the selected option are submitted as the name/value pair. Therefore, it is important to assign a meaningful value to the VALUE attribute of each OPTION element in a select list. You can use the VALUE attribute to disguise user-unfriendly (but server-friendly) values from the user, while presenting a user-friendly entry that appears in the select list. Content for the human-readable entry of a select list is entered after the OPTION element’s start tag. The end tag is optional because the entry is delimited either by the next OPTION element start tag or the SELECT element’s end tag. See also the OPTGROUP attribute for possible future grouping of OPTION elements into hierarchical menu groupings.

Example

<SELECT NAME="chapters">
    <OPTION VALUE="1">Chapter 1
    <OPTION VALUE="2">Chapter 2
    <OPTION VALUE="3">Chapter 3
    <OPTION VALUE="4">Chapter 4
</SELECT>

Object Model Reference

NN

[window.]document.formName.selectName.optionName

[window.]document.forms[i].elements[i].optionName

IE

[window.]document. ...