<p>The select menu is based on a native <code>select</code> 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>To add a select menu to your page, start with a standard <code>select</code> element populated with a set of <code>option</code> elements. Set the <code>for</code> attribute of the <code>label</code> to match the ID of the <code>select</code> so they are semantically associated. Wrap them in a <code>div</code> with the <code> data-role="fieldcontain"</code> attribute to help visually group it in a longer form. </p>
<p>The framework will find all <code>select</code> elements and automatically enhance them into select menus. The markup for a select grouped in a field container:</p>
<p>the framework builds a custom menu based on the <code>select</code> element's list of options. We recommend using a custom menu when multiple selections are required, as , or when the menu itself must be styled with CSS.</p>
<p>You can optionally use custom-styled select menus instead of the native OS menu. The custom menu supports disabled options and multiple selection (whereas native mobile OS support for both is inconsistent), adds an elegant way to handle placeholder values, and restores missing functionality on certain platforms such as <code>optgroup</code> support on Android (all explained below). In addition, the framework applies the custom button's theme to the menu to better match the look and feel and provide visual consistency across platforms. Lastly, custom menus often look better on desktop browsers because native desktop menus are smaller than their mobile counterparts and tend to look disproportionate.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that there is overhead involved in parsing the native select to build a custom menu. If there are a lot of selects on a page, or a select has a long list of options, this can impact the performance of the page, so we recommend using custom menus sparingly. </p>
<p>To use custom menus on a specific <code>select</code>, just add the <code>data-native-menu="false"</code> attribute. Alternately, this can also programmatically set the select menu's <code>nativeMenu</code> configuration option to <code>false</code> in a callback bound to the <code>mobileinit</code> event to achieve the same effect. This will globally make all selects use the custom menu by default. The following must be included in the page after jQuery is loaded but before jQuery Mobile is loaded.</p>
<p>When the <code>select</code> has a small number of options that will fit on the device's screen, the menu will appear as a small overlay with a pop transition:</p>
<p>When it has too many options to show on the device's screen, the framework will automatically create a new "page" populated with a standard <ahref="../../lists/docs-lists.html">list view</a> for the options. This allows us to use the native scrolling included on the device for moving through a long list. The text inside the <code>label</code> is used as the title for this page.</p>
<p>jQuery Mobile will automatically disable and style option tags with the <code>disabled</code> attribute. In the demo below, the second option "Rush: 3 days" has been set to disabled.</p>
<p>It's common for developers to include a "null" option in their select element to force a user to choose an option. If a placeholder option is present in your markup, jQuery Mobile will hide them in the overlay menu, showing only valid choices to the user, and display the placeholder text inside the menu as a header. A placeholder option is added when the framework finds:</p>
<li>An option with no value attribute (or an empty value attribute)</li>
<li>An option with no text node</li>
<li>An option with a <code>data-placeholder="true"</code> attribute. (This allows you to use an option that has a value and a textnode as a placeholder option).</li>
<li>A header element will be created inside the menu and display the placeholder text and a close button.</li>
<li>Clicking on an item inside the overlay menu will not close the widget.</li>
<li>A ghosted, unchecked icon will appear adjacent to each unselected item. When the item is selected the icon will change to a checkbox. Neither icon will appear inside a single select box.</li>
<li>Once 2+ items are selected, a counter element with the total number of selected items will appear inside the button.</li>
<li>The text of each selected item will appear inside the button as a list. If the button is not wide enough to display the entire list, it is truncated with an ellipses.</li>
<li>If no items are selected, the button's text will default to the placeholder text.</li>
<li>If no placeholder element exists, the default button text will be blank and the header will appear with just a close button. Because this isn't a friendly user experience, we recommended that you always specify a placeholder element when using multiple select boxes.</li>
<p>When a select is large enough to where the menu will open in a new page, the placeholder text is displayed in the button when no items are selected, and the <code>label</code> text is displayed in the menu's header. This differs from smaller overlay menus where the placeholder text is displayed in both the button and the header, and from full-page single selects where the placeholder text is not used at all.</p>
<p>If a select menu contains <code>optgroup</code> elements, jQuery Mobile will create a divider & group items based on the <code>label</code> attribute's text:</p>
<p>You can specify any jQuery Mobile button <code>data-</code> attribute on a select element, too. In this example, we're setting the theme, icon and inline properties:</p>
<p>The select menu plugin will auto initialize on any page that contains a select menu, no need for a <code>data-role</code> attribute in the markup. However, you can directly call the select menu plugin on any selector, just like any normal jQuery plugin:</p>
