James,

On Sun, 14 Sep 2003 08:52:43 -0700, James Newton, webhost wrote:

> source= http://www.piclist.com/piclist/2003/09/11/211507a.txt?
>
> James Newton asked "How do you make a pull down <SELECT> show all the
> options when the user tabs into it?"

This is not standard behaviour of what is called a "Combo Box" in most Visual languages.  The behaviour is
that you tab into the data field part of the box, and the only way to get it to pull down is to use the
down-arrow part of the box.  A click event after tabbing-in would happen in the data field, so would achieve
nothing since the item there is already selected.  The fact that you're in the data field is why you can start
typing the data and it will skip down the list to the first item that matches what you've typed (in most
languages).  If you want different behaviour, you'd have to either create a class of object ("control" in MS
jargon) that does what you want.  Not trivial and in many languages not possible.  However, if there is an
event for "pulldown arrow clicked" you may be able to trigger this, but as far as I remember this is not
usually accessible.

>...<

> I thought that it would be easy to fire an onclick event in onFocus, but
> that has no effect.

As I say above, you are "clicking" in the data field, so this is what I'd expect.

> After spending hours trying everything I could think of and searching the
> net, it actually appears that there is no way to do this! Can you believe
> that?

Yes!  Visual controls are designed to perform a specified function, and tweaking them isn't in the game plan!
In the same way that you can't get "+" to return the sum with integer and decimal parts as two fields... it's
just not in the spec.

> Challenge: Find a way to make a SIZE=1 select with several options pull down
> (just like it would if you clicked on it) when you tab into it.
>
> Response: It can't be done.

As the Carlsberg adverts say:  Probably!

 Cheers,

Howard Winter
St.Albans, England

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