Mixing font style in a drop down

On 2009-06-22, Jonathan N. Little <lws4art (AT) centralva (DOT) net> wrote:

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Funnily enough, if you use optgroup, then IE won't let you turn _off_
the italics or the bolding using CSS.

IE, all flavors, is such a cantankerous inflexible creature and such a
"delight" for web authors!

To be fair to IE, you shouldn't expect to be able to style optgroup. It
says in the CSS spec somewhere that any support you get in a browser for
styling replaced UI thingies should be regarded as experimental.

Here it is (in 3.2):

CSS 2.1 does not define which properties apply to form controls and
frames, or how CSS can be used to style them. User agents may apply
CSS properties to these elements. Authors are recommended to treat
such support as experimental. A future level of CSS may specify this
further.

Nicolas Verhaeghe wrote:

This drop down has about 70+ choices, so radio buttons would not work.

What makes you think so?

And yes, 70+ is a lot, but this what the client wants.

If 70+ options would be reasonable, what would be unreasonable with 70+
radio buttons? It's a professional's responsibility to tell the client that
the approach is wrong, instead of asking others to implement it.

Each item in the drop down has to mix two font styles, on the same
line, basically.

Basically, you are asking for something logically impossible.

I'll dig a bit into this for a while, but I already told the client
this would be a bit more work,

That's wrong information. You should have told that you don't know whether
it is possible (or that it is not possible).

On Jun 22, 9:15 am, Adrienne Boswell <arb... (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

Upside-down fullquoting ranks you as a fairly clueless Usenet poster, to be
honest.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Ben C wrote:

On 2009-06-22, Jonathan N. Little <lws4art (AT) centralva (DOT) net> wrote:
Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Funnily enough, if you use optgroup, then IE won't let you turn _off_
the italics or the bolding using CSS.
IE, all flavors, is such a cantankerous inflexible creature and such a
"delight" for web authors!

To be fair to IE, you shouldn't expect to be able to style optgroup. It
says in the CSS spec somewhere that any support you get in a browser for
styling replaced UI thingies should be regarded as experimental.

Here it is (in 3.2):

CSS 2.1 does not define which properties apply to form controls and
frames, or how CSS can be used to style them. User agents may apply
CSS properties to these elements. Authors are recommended to treat
such support as experimental. A future level of CSS may specify this
further.

True, if only experimental features of CSS were the only source of blue
language when dealing with IE

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

In article
<423e1b69-5081-4968-9328-3a763bee877a (AT) x31g2000prc (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
Nicolas Verhaeghe <nicver (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:

On Jun 21, 8:33Â*pm, dorayme <doraymeRidT... (AT) optusnet (DOT) com.au> wrote:
In article <doraymeRidThis-929BE1.13294722062... (AT) news (DOT) albasani.net>,
....

Well, thanks, but what you are showing me is not a drop down, but a
list.

Misunderstanding on my part, I was showing you a way with a drop down
menu made with lists.

--
dorayme

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Nicolas Verhaeghe
<nicver (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> writing in
news:3f52580b-92d1-4003-b485-c7fed518f1ef (AT) x31g2000prc (DOT) googlegroups.com:

Please don't top post. Post corrected, see bottom.

On Jun 22, 9:15*am, Adrienne Boswell <arb... (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote:
Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "Jukka K. Korpela"
jkorp... (AT) cs (DOT) tut.fi> writing
innews:JUN%l.16028$vi5.8198 (AT) uutiset (DOT) elisa.fi
:

I have a request for a drop-down mixing font style.

Drop-downs are rather often an inferior way of setting up a menu of
choices, as compared with radio buttons (or checkboxes).

Basically, each
option item has to be in normal style, up to the middle where the
style needs to be italic.

I wonder if the OP is looking for OptGroup, eg:

select name="something"
option value="">Pick Somthing</option
optgroup label="First Choices"
option value="a">a</option
option value="b">b</option
/optgroup
optgroup label="Second Choices"
option value="c">c</option
option value="d">d</option
/optgroup
/select

The optgroup element does appear in bold italic, so maybe that's what
the OP _really_ wants.


Adrienne, no in this case it is nothing about optgroup.

Also using a line item is not what my client requires in this case.
The drop down is also populated in code behind from a data source, and
this is relatively rigid at this point. There is also a need for
consistency with the other drop downs.

URL? It might help if you give us one, and then we might have some ideas
that could give you other options.

This drop down has about 70+ choices, so radio buttons would not work.
And yes, 70+ is a lot, but this what the client wants.

Tell the client to stop wanting that. Seriously. IIRC, there are some
browsers that will max out at a certain amount of options. I seem to
remember a post about that over at
microsoft.public.inetserver.asp.general. If that's the case, then you
HAVE to do something else.

I could code my own web control to accommodate this request if I find
the best option for this.

Each item in the drop down has to mix two font styles, on the same
line, basically.

Ah ha! So you want to do something like:

<select name="field">
<% list = array("something","anything","nothing")
things = array("other","mine","yours")

for i = 0 to ubound(list)
%>
<option value="<%=i%>"><%=list(i)%><span class="myclass"><%=things(i)%>
</span></option>
<% next%>
</select>

Sorry, it's not going to work. There just isn't browser support for it
right now. Even if you _could_ find a browser that would do it
correctly, you would still have to deal with IE.

I'll dig a bit into this for a while, but I already told the client
this would be a bit more work, meaning a bit more money to spend, so I
expect them to drop the ball on this diva request.

Thanks for the help

If some browsers stop rendering at a certain amount of options, then your
diva doesn't have enough money - unless she wants to hire someone to
develop a new browser, and then hire hit men to make sure everyone uses
it.

--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share

On 22 juin, 14:54, "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4... (AT) centralva (DOT) net> wrote:

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
Funnily enough, if you use optgroup, then IE won't let you turn _off_
the italics or the bolding using CSS.

IE, all flavors, is such a cantankerous inflexible creature and such a
"delight" for web authors!

"CSS 2.1 does not define which properties apply to form controls and
frames, or how CSS can be used to style them. User agents may apply
CSS properties to these elements. Authors are recommended to treat
such support as experimental. A future level of CSS may specify this
further."
CSS 2.1, section 3.2 UA Conformance
http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/conform.html

regards, Gérard
--
Internet Explorer 7 bugs: 175 bugs so far
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/
Internet Explorer 8 bugs: 49 bugs so far
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE8Bugs/