13 jQuery SelectBox/Drop-down Plugins

13 jQuery drop-down menu plug-ins help you improve your web interactive experience! This article was updated on October 12, 2016 to reflect the current status of the drop-down menu plug-in.

The default drop-down menu style is not satisfactory for everyone. Sometimes you may need to control its appearance (to maintain consistency across browsers and devices), or you may need other features that are not natively supported.

Luckily, there are many excellent jQuery-based plugins that can simplify this process.

We will cover some plugins that you can integrate into your next project. Some of these plugins have highly configurable options, methods, and events, while others are simple drop-down menu style replacements that are easy to use.

Key Points

• This article outlines 13 jQuery SelectBox/drop-down menu plugins that can be used to customize the appearance and functionality of web page drop-down menus.
• Plugins such as Chosen, Select2, and Selectize provide a wide range of customization options and additional features such as in-drop-down search, multi-select elements, highlighting, and remote data binding.
• Some plugins, such as jQuery Nice Select and jQuery Selectbox, focus more on redesigning the drop-down menu and offer fewer advanced features to make them suitable for simple projects.
• Image Combo Box and DDSlick jQuery drop-down menus allow adding images and descriptions to each option in the drop-down menu, providing a visual representation of each choice.
• This article emphasizes the importance of considering project requirements when selecting plugins, as some plugins provide a wide range of features and customization options that may not be necessary for simple projects. It also emphasizes the importance of checking the browser compatibility and maintenance status of the plugin.

Chosen

Chosen is a powerful plugin that not only redesigns your drop-down menu, but also provides other features such as within the drop-down menu search, multi-select elements, and highlighting.

If you want to update the default style of the drop-down menu, you can use this plugin, but its really powerful feature is the additional features:

• Ability to handle multi-select options. Each selection will be saved and easily deleted if needed.
• The ability to filter elements by searching. Very useful when you have a long list of options (such as country names).

All features of this plugin work properly, desktop support traces back to IE8 compatibility. A positive (or negative) factor is that on mobile devices, the drop-down menu returns to its native form, giving the mobile browser controls how you interact with them.

The

Options document outlines all settings, methods, and events that you can customize elements. The plugin itself is maintained by developers involved in the development of Harvest project management tools. Their GitHub repository is constantly updated with additional features, bug fixes and optimizations.

Website/GitHub

Select2

Select2 is a fully functional, rich drop-down menu replacement/enhancement plugin. It not only redesigns your drop-down menu, it can also be expanded with additional features.

Like other advanced drop-down menu plugins, it contains many customizable features such as:

• Single-choice element/element with optgroups
• Multiple-selected elements
• Sorted/filterable drop-down menu search field
• Ability to load data from remote data sources (e.g., dynamically change options from API)
• Tag support (select/dynamic tags from predefined list)

Select2 has been under development since 2012. The developers have migrated from version 3 to version 4 and have rewritten the plugin in the process to make it faster, more responsive and mobile-friendly. Select2's GitHub page is impressive and the team worked together to make the plugin better every time it was released.

The plugin is more focused on developers, and its options page shows a comprehensive example of how to use each of the different features.

This plugin provides high-level customization, and it is a great option if you are looking for a plugin that can be customized to match your project.

Website/Demo/GitHub

jQuery Nice Select

This plugin is a lightweight drop-down menu replacement library. jQuery Nice Select Replace the default native drop-down menu with a redesigned drop-down menu.

This plugin doesn't have much functionality as it is designed as a way to quickly redesign the drop-down menu to deliver visually appealing content without much effort. The plugin is actively developing and improving in its GitHub repository and works well on both mobile and desktop browsers.

If you're looking for some quick and easy plugin that just redesigns the drop-down menu without much effort, then this is your choice.

Website and Demos/GitHub

Selectize

Selectize is an extremely developer-oriented, comprehensive plugin that not only provides you with a better-looking drop-down list, but also adds new useful features such as tags, remote data binding, and dynamic drop-down menus.

Like Select2 and Choosen, Selectize is quite developer-oriented, giving you control over how drop-down menus work. Their documentation is fairly comprehensive, outlining a range of options and several callbacks that you can hook to further customize the plugin.

The plugin is constantly being updated, and the developers have released several versions over the past year. Sometimes you are not sure if a good plugin you just found is being actively maintained or if it is just provided "as is", but for Selectize, the project still seems to be active, almost all the problem/bug reports are resolved, and it is done A fairly transparent discussion.

In terms of functionality, Selectize works very well. This plugin not only redesigns the default controls, but also expands it with powerful features such as search filtering, multi-select functionality, and remote data binding. All of this works well on desktop and mobile browsers.

This plugin is a very good overall choice and should be one of your "preferred" options if you want to redesign and extend the functionality of the drop-down menu.

Website and Demos/GitHub

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Image Combo Box

Website/Demo/GitHub

jQuery Searchable DropDown Plugin

Website/Demo

Multi-select Combo Box

Website/Demo/GitHub

jQuery Selectbox

Website and Demos/GitHub

Multiselect.js

Website/GitHub

JQuery SumoSelect

Website/Demo/GitHub

jQuery UI Selectmenu

Website and Demo

jQuery Filterable Bootstrap Select

Demo/GitHub

DDSlick jQuery DropDown

Website

Summary

There is a wide range of options for selecting the drop-down menu to replace the plug-in. Over the past few years, some of the more popular libraries have been improved, introducing new features while improving their capabilities.

You need to search for the various libraries I mentioned today to see which one will best meet your needs. For example, if you just want to redesign the drop-down menu, do you really need a library that also provides filtering and remote data binding?

For most of these libraries, you should be able to get up and running relatively quickly. Most libraries only require jQuery and related plugin files, and you're ready to go.

If you are keen on custom options or hook callbacks, you may want to choose a library that focuses more on developers, such as Selectize, Choosen, or Select2. Finding a library that works for you will depend on your opinion.

If you use other great libraries in using drop-down menu replacement, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you!

FAQs about jQuery SelectBox/drop-down menu plug-in (FAQ)

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