NOTICE: FancySelect is no longer actively maintained.

Now that it's possible to easily style select elements in all major browsers, I am no longer maintaining FancySelect. Native selects are more usable and accessible, and you should probably use them. You're welcome to use FancySelect, but for the time being it is not officially supported.

Feel free to yell at me on Twitter about this: https://twitter.com/paulstraw

-paul

FancySelect

A better select for discerning web developers everywhere, lovingly crafted by Paul Straw. You can download it here, or check out the demo.

Basic Usage

FancySelect is easy to use. Just include jQuery or Zepto, target any select element on the page, and call .fancySelect() on it. If the select has an option with no value, it'll be used as a sort of placeholder text.

By default, FancySelect uses native selects and styles only the trigger on iOS devices. To override this, pass an object with forceiOS set to true when initializing it.

FancySelect also passes any classes specified in the select's data-class attribute, which you can use to style specific FancySelect instances.

HTML

<select class="basic">
  <option value="">Select something…</option>
  <option>Lorem</option>
  <option>Ipsum</option>
  <option>Dolor</option>
  <option>Sit</option>
  <option>Amet</option>
</select>

JavaScript

$('.basic').fancySelect();

Updating Options

If the options in your select change after initializing FancySelect, you can tell it to rebuild the list of options by triggering update.fs on the select element.

JavaScript

var mySelect = $('.my-select');

mySelect.fancySelect();

mySelect.append('<option>Foo</option><option>Bar</option>');

mySelect.trigger('update.fs');

Enabling/Disabling

FancySelect will automatically pick up your select's disabled property on initialization. If you need to enable or disable it again later, you can do that by triggering enable.fs or disable.fs on your select element.

HTML

<select class="my-select" disabled>
	<option>First Option</option>
	<option>Second Option</option>
</select>

JavaScript

var mySelect = $('.my-select');
mySelect.fancySelect(); // currently disabled because of html property

// later…
mySelect.trigger('enable.fs'); // now enabled

// even later…
mySelect.trigger('disable.fs'); // now disabled again

Including Blank Option

FancySelect can include the blank option in the options list if you pass the includeBlank parameter:

JavaScript

var mySelect = $('.my-select');
mySelect.fancySelect({includeBlank: true});

Templates

If you need to do something fancy with the trigger or the individual options, you can use triggerTemplate or optionTemplate, which are both functions passed an option element (jQuery-wrapped) and returning an HTML string to render.

HTML

<select class="bulbs">
	<option data-icon="old">Incandescent</option>
	<option data-icon="curly">CFL</option>
	<option data-icon="work">Halogen</option>
</select>

$('.bulbs').fancySelect({
	optionTemplate: function(optionEl) {
		return optionEl.text() + '<div class="icon-' + optionEl.data('icon') + '"></div>';
	}
}
})

Triggering the change event

You can listen to the change.fs event in order to trigger the DOM's change event on the <select> element.

HTML

<select class="my-select" disabled>
	<option>First Option</option>
	<option>Second Option</option>
</select>

JavaScript

var mySelect = $('.my-select');
mySelect.fancySelect().on('change.fs', function() {
	$(this).trigger('change.$');
}); // trigger the DOM's change event when changing FancySelect

Contributions

Any contribution is absolutely welcome, but please review the contribution guidelines before getting started.