Question

I want to be able to detect when the user has selected an option from a SELECT element in a form. I know what to do from there, but not sure about how to achieve the initial detection.

<select id="mySelect">
    <option>1</option>
    <option>2</option>
    <option>3</option>
</select>

I would like the solution in JQuery if possible.

Answer 1

You probably want the .change() handler, like this:

$("#mySelect").change(function() {
  var newVal = $(this).val();
  //do something
});

.val() gets the current value of the dropdown (as a string), just use that to do whatever you want, e.g. alert("The new value is: " + $(this).val());, etc.