Selectmenu

Page history last edited by fnagel 1 day, 9 hours ago

type: widget

release: 0.0

status: in development

documentation: N/A

demo: http://view.jqueryui.com/selectmenu/demos/selectmenu/default.html

TODOs

Write unit tests to cover defaults, options, methods and events

Should replace most visual tests, like the event logging

Check in Konquerer (see https://github.com/fnagel/jquery-ui/issues/197)
Replace usage of button widget with some custom code

Use _hoverable and _focusable to implement that

Keyboard handling

Hitting Escape key should close an open selectmenu, to match behaviour of native selects
Cursor left/right behave the same as up/down, not the case with native selects

Update keyhandling part of the spec (draft is there, incomplete)

both for collapsed and expanded states
home/end, page up/down, cursors, alt modifier

Improve handling of optgroup header (click should not close menu)
Figure out how to deal with empty optgroup elements

Currently not getting displayed - if that is fine, just document it as such

1 - Description:

A jQuery UI widget that duplicates and extends the functionality of a native HTML select element, allowing it to be customizable in behavior and appearance far beyond the limitations of a native select.

Related plugins:

http://www.givainc.com/labs/linkselect_jquery_plugin.htm
DropKick.js: http://jamielottering.github.com/DropKick/
Chosen: http://harvesthq.github.com/chosen/

Previous implementations:

Bugfixed and jQuery 1.4.x / UI 1.8.x compatible version of this plugin: Please download repo at http://github.com/fnagel/jquery-ui/tree/selectmenu and open: demo/selectmenu/index.html
Feel free to post feature requests and bugs in the comments or even better in the GitHub issue tracker. This edit was made after consulting Todd Parker.

The wiki there has details, along with an FAQ, of what that version covers.

Additional Bugfixes can be found in this repo: http://github.com/tauren/jquery-ui/tree/selectmenu. This repo is a fork of the fnagel repo listed above and includes all bug fixes and features available in that repo as well as bug fixes for positional problems such as using <optgroup> tags with scrolling popup selectmenus. A pull request has been sent for these bugfixes to be pulled into the fnagel repo. An additional demo for positional fixes has been included at https://github.com/tauren/jquery-ui/blob/selectmenu/demos/selectmenu/positioning.html.

2 - Visual Design:

3 - Functional Specification:

The default way to use this plugin is by calling the selectmenu method on a select element:

$('select').selectmenu();

Feature details:

selectmenu will act as a proxy back to the original select element, controlling its state for form submission or serialization
Any form label originally associated with the select menu will be associated with the new form control, by forwarding the click event on the original select (as long as the label's for-attribute matches the select's id-attribute).
The menu will support both in-place "popup" or drop-down styles
The menu will be fully keyboard accessible using matching conventions to native select elements

cursor up: focus previous item, if the last was focussed, go to first
cursor down: focus next item, if the first was focussed, go to last
cursor up/down+alt: ?
cursor left/right?
page up/down?
when closed: ?

The menu will have ARIA support for screenreaders so the original select element can safely be hidden from all users
Different arrow icons depending on menu type
The presentation menu is built based on labels and values of the wrapped select. Custom presentations are possible.
The min-width of the menu is the width of the input. Ala autocomplete.
The max-height of the menu can be controlled via CSS, or, if necessary, via JS customizations
For render customizations, e.g. custom background images for each item, the widget provides _renderMenu and _renderItem, like autocomplete does. Users can override these, e.g. override _renderMenu and use a template to output the markup. These need to be better documented then what's currently in place for Autocomplete.
Type-ahead, as built-in into menu.
Optgroup support just like native select does, with a flat list with group headers (similar to this categories autocomplete demo menu)

Optional: Render groups as nested lists, making each group a popup menu, with the top-level item the group's header

Disabling individual options or optgroups happens by updating the original select, then calling the refresh method on the Selectmenu.
While selectmenu updates the underlying select element, it doesn't trigger any events on that element, e.g. change. If other components rely on that event, you have to build the integration manually.

Not supported:

Initializing from something that isn't a select-element. Use Menu together with Popup instead.
An index-method (no usecase so far). If you really need it, provide a usecase.

Options:

appendTo

see autocomplete

dropdown: Boolean, default true (open below trigger, same as native select), set to false to open the menu around the trigger
position

see autocomplete
might get overriden when using dropdown:false

Methods:

refresh

parses the original element again, updates the value option and rerenders the menu
triggers events if value changed

open

opens the menu

close

closes the menu

menuWidget

sibling to the built-in widget method (which returns that button element)
this one returns the menu element, which isn't a child of the button

Events:

open

when menu opens

focus

when item receives focus

select

when selection changes
with reference to original option

close

when menu closes

change

on blur, when selected changed
with reference to original option

4 - Markup & Style:

4.1 Initial markup examples

<option value="Slower" class="whoo">Slower</option>

<option value="Faster">Faster</option>

</select>

4.2 Recommended transformed HTML markup

<span class="ui-selectmenu-status">Slower</span>

</a>

</div>

<li class="whoo ui-corner-top ui-selectmenu-item-selected ui-state-active"><a aria-selected="true" role="option" tabindex="-1" href="#">Slower</a></li>

<li class="ui-corner-bottom"><a aria-selected="false" role="option" tabindex="-1" href="#">Faster</a></li>

</ul>

</div>

4.3 Accessibility recommendation

Attributes on button:

role="combobox"
aria-haspopup="true"
aria-expanded (accordingly)
aria-autocomplete="list"
aria-owns="[widget menu's id value]"
generated ID for ARIA element referencing
tabindex of 0 or value from select element
aria-disabled (accordingly)
Keep focus on the button

ARIA attributes on menu portion:

role="listbox"
aria-labelledby="[widget button's id value]"
generated ID for ARIA element referencing
Each anchor within menu requires :

aria-selected (accordingly)
tabindex="-1"
role="option"

5 - Latest version of plugin:

http://view.jqueryui.com/selectmenu/demos/selectmenu/default.html

6 - Open issues being discussed

Tabled/deferred

Should we have an option for scrollbarless slick scrolling (arrows at top and bottom and list scrolls dynamically with mouse position)?

Should be an option of menu, not selectmenu. Not planned right now.

Mobile browser support: jQuery Mobile provides a good reference implementation for now, eventually we should be able to merge parts of both frameworks back together.
Disabling menu's built-in wrapping might be interesting. Ignoring that for now.