jQuery selectBox: A styleable replacement for SELECT elements

Licensed under the MIT license: http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Features

• Supports OPTGROUPS
• Supports standard dropdown controls
• Supports multi-select controls (i.e. multiple="multiple")
• Supports inline controls (i.e. size="5")
• Fully accessible via keyboard
• Shift + click (or shift + enter) to select a range of options in multi-select controls
• Type to search when the control has focus
• Auto-height based on the size attribute (to use, omit the height property in your CSS!)
• Tested in IE7-IE9, Firefox 3-4, recent WebKit browsers, and Opera

Usage

Link to the JS file:

<script src="jquery.selectbox.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Add the CSS file (or append contents to your own stylesheet):

<link href="jquery.selectbox.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

To initialize:

// default
$('select').selectBox();

// or with custom settings
$('select').selectBox({
    mobile: true,
    menuSpeed: 'fast'
});

Settings

Key	Default	Values	Description
mobile	false	Boolean	Disables the widget for mobile devices
menuTransition	default	default, slide, fade	The show/hide transition for dropdown menus
menuSpeed	normal	slow, normal, fast	The show/hide transition speed
loopOptions	false	Boolean	Flag to allow arrow keys to loop through options

To specify settings after the init, use this syntax:

$('select').selectBox('settings', {settingName: value, ... });

Methods

To call a method use this syntax:

$('select').selectBox('methodName', [option]);

Available methods

Key	Description
create	Creates the control (default)
destroy	Destroys the selectBox control and reverts back to the original form control
disable	Disables the control (i.e. disabled="disabled")
enable	Enables the control
value	If passed with a value, sets the control to that value; otherwise returns the current value
options	If passed either a string of HTML or a JSON object, replaces the existing options; otherwise Returns the options container element as a jQuery object
control	Returns the selectBox control element (an anchor tag) for working with directly
refresh	Updates the selectBox control's options based on the original controls options
instance	Returns the SelectBox instance, where you have more methods available (only in v1.2.0-dev

             | available) as in the `SelectBox` class below.                                                 |

API SelectBox

You can instantiate the selectBox also through a classic OOP way:

var selectBox = new SelectBox($('#mySelectBox'), settings = {});
selectBox.showMenu();

The public methods are:

refresh()
destroy()
disable()
enable()

getLabelClass()
getLabelText()
getSelectElement()
getOptions(String type = 'inline'|'dropdown')

hideMenus()
showMenu()

setLabel()
setOptions(Object options)
setValue(String value)

removeHover(HTMLElement li)
addHover(HTMLElement li)

disableSelection(HTMLElement selector)
generateOptions(jQuery self, jQuery options)
handleKeyDown(event)
handleKeyPress(event)
init(options)
keepOptionInView(jQuery li, Boolean center)
refresh()
removeHover(HTMLElement li)
selectOption(HTMLElement li, event)

Events

Events are fired on the original select element. You can bind events like this:

$('select').selectBox().change(function () {
    alert($(this).val());
});

Available events

Key	Description
focus	Fired when the control gains focus
blur	Fired when the control loses focus
change	Fired when the value of a control changes
beforeopen	Fired before a dropdown menu opens (cancelable)
open	Fired after a dropdown menu opens (not cancelable)
beforeclose	Fired before a dropdown menu closes (cancelable)
close	Fired after a dropdown menu closes (not cancelable)

Known Issues

• The blur and focus callbacks are not very reliable in IE7. The change callback works fine.

Credits

Original plugin by Cory LaViska of A Beautiful Site, LLC. (http://www.abeautifulsite.net/)