Question

I have had many attempts now on attempting to make this work and i dont know what to do i have used the .selectedIndex Method ect. but still no luck, i have made an array of my tags and then sorting them but i would like my “Please select an option” to be the default option. Here’s my code 🙂

            function sorting()
        {
            var mylist = document.getElementById("dropdown");
            arritems = new Array();
            for(i=0; i<mylist.length; i++)  
            {
                arritems[i] = mylist.options[i].text;

            }

            arritems.sort();

            for(var i=0; i<mylist.length; i++)  
            {
                mylist.options[i].text = arritems[i];
                mylist.options[i].value = arritems[i];
            }

        }

Here is my HTML code:

<form id="form"action = "#">
            <label>First Name: </label> <input type="text" id="firstname" /> <br />
            <label>Last Name: </label> <input type="text" id="lastname" /> <br />
            Please select an option: <select id="dropdown">
            <option id="please select" value="Please select an option" selected="selected">Please select an option</option>
            <option id="boots" value="Boots" >Boots</option>
            <option id="gloves" value="Gloves" >Gloves</option>
            <option id="scarf" value="Scarf">Scarf</option>
            <option id="hat" value="Hat">Hat</option>
            <option id="glasses" value="Glasses">Glasses</option>
            </select> <br />
            <button id="submits" onclick="table();">Submit</button>
        </form>

Answer 1

Try:

// get a handle to thedropdown
var select = document.getElementById('dropdown'), sorted;
if (select) {
  // sort an array-copy of the options (exluding the first) by their text value
  sorted = Array.prototype.slice.call(select.getElementsByTagName('option'), 1).sort(function (a, b) {
    return a.innerText.localeCompare(b.innerText);
  });

  // flush 'sorted' while re-appending the dom-nodes
  while(sorted.length > 0) {
    select.appendChild(sorted.shift());
  }
}

http://jsfiddle.net/dJqLL/