Question

I’m required to use Firefox 1.5 (yes I know…) for an in house tool, only used on a closed system.

I have a basic html select drop down menu:

<select name="selectName" ID="Select">
   <option value="A" selected>Tom</option>
   <option value="B">Jim</option>
   <option value="C">Nancy</option>
</select>

In JavaScript, I would like to extract the name (inner text) of the selected option.

In Firefox 3.6 I can do the following:

var x = document.getElementById("Select");
var name = x.children[x.selectedIndex].text;

and name will contain the string of the selected drop down. (Tom by default)

However, when I run this code in Firefox 1.5, I get the following error:

x.children has no properties

Unfortunately, I can’t install Firebug on 1.5, as it is not compatible, to get any more information.

I have a JavaScript Error console on 1.5 and that is all.

How else can I get the text of the selected option, that would work with FF1.5.

Is there a JQuery method that would work in this situation?

Also, I’m interested why this does not work in FF1.5

(Is there a compatible JS debugger for FF 1.5?)

Thank You.

Answer 1

The <select> element has an “options” attribute whose value is the array of <option> elements. You should be able to use that exactly as you’re using “children”. (In fact I think that’s a better habit to be in, because the children of the <select> aren’t necessarily just <option> elements.)