mc********@yahoo.com (Michael Chernecki) wrote:
I have a series of select menus on an online order form. I have
limited space for the field width.
Then remove the limitations. If you posted the URL, someone might help
and tell how.
Is is possible to have the menu
width grow automaticallt to accomodate long item names.
That's what happens automatically, in visual rendering, unless you try
to prevent that. As usual, the URL could reveal the real problem you
have.
For instance, the field may be 1 inch width on the form, but when I
click the menu it will expand to 2-3 inches wide to show a long
item name, then return to normal size after making the selection.
If you expect HTML (which is the topic of this group) to deal with such
issues, you should calibrate your expectations. HTML is just a poor
lonesome data format.
By the way, two or three inches is still ridiculously small if the font
size is, say, 36 points. Note that users can and often need to override
any font size settings you might have.
I don't care if the display of the select value gets truncated to fit
in the narrow field,
Maybe users do?
but I would like to be able to see the full
length name when I pull on the menu.
You could play with CSS. But it is debatable whether that would mean an
improvement even when it works. It's best to solve the problem you
have, namely the restriction on the width, instead of keeping that
problem and creating some new problems.
--
Yucca,
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html 
