jQuery selectBox: A styleable replacement for SELECT elements

Dual licensed under the MIT / GPLv2 licenses

Demo

Supports OPTGROUPS
Supports standard dropdown controls
Supports multi-select controls (i.e. multiple="multiple")
Supports inline controls (i.e. size="5")
Fully accessible via keyboard
Shift + click (or shift + enter) to select a range of options in multi-select controls
Type to search when the control has focus
Auto-height based on the size attribute (to use, omit the height property in your CSS!)
Tested in IE7-IE9, Firefox 3-4, recent WebKit browsers, and Opera

Link to the JS file:

<script src="jquery.selectbox.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Add the CSS file (or append contents to your own stylesheet):

<link href="jquery.selectbox.min.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

To create:

$("SELECT").selectBox([settings]);

To specify settings, use this syntax:

$("SELECT").selectBox('settings', { settingName: value, ... });

menuTransition [default,slide,fade] - the show/hide transition for dropdown menus
menuSpeed [slow,normal,fast] - the show/hide transition speed
loopOptions [boolean] - flag to allow arrow keys to loop through options

To call a method use this syntax:

$("SELECT").selectBox('methodName', [options]);

create - Creates the control (default)
destroy - Destroys the selectBox control and reverts back to the original form control
disable - Disables the control (i.e. disabled="disabled")
enable - Enables the control
value - if passed with a value, sets the control to that value; otherwise returns the current value
options - if passed either a string of HTML or a JSON object, replaces the existing options; otherwise returns the options container element as a jQuery object
control - returns the selectBox control element (an anchor tag) for working with directly
refresh - updates the selectBox control's options based on the original controls options

Events are fired on the original select element. You can bind events like this:

$("SELECT").selectBox().change( function() { alert( $(this).val() ); } );

The blur and focus callbacks are not very reliable in IE7. The change callback works fine.