[thelist] Another Dumb CSS Question

David Wagner dave at worlddomination.net
Wed Jan 31 17:08:48 CST 2001


> No, I still want to dropdown to be a single line of text in it's unselected
> state, but in it's 'open/over' state, if you have more than a few options,
> you get to the upper limit of the dropdown box size. IE seems to only allow
> 11 lines of text  i.e. 11 options before it shows a scroll-bar , and
> netscape seems to go up to 20 before it shows one.
> 
> I just wondered if there was a CSS attribute for it

I'm just guessing here, so I could very well be wrong, but I don't think
there's any way to control the size of a dropdown. The reason is that it
_should_ be controlled either by the browser or the OS (I'm not sure
which), and depends entirely on screen real estate and window position and
such. You may have noticed that if a drop-down is near the bottom of the
browser window, it usually becomes a "drop-up" -- this is a decision made
without regard to the rendering of the HTML. Similar concessions should be
made with regard to the "size" (number of elements shown) of a drop-down,
depending on how much space is available on the screen or in the window.

Therefore, logically, there shouldn't be a way to firmly control the size
of a drop-down menu. (This is not meant to imply that browsers are
logical.) You might, however, be able to offer "suggestions" for size. No,
I don't have any clue how that might be done. Useful, huh? :)

-- 

David Wagner
dave at worlddomination.net





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