Can I Programmatically Display an HTML Select's Options?

How to Programmatically Display an HTML Select's Options

It is generally known that displaying an HTML select's options programmatically is not possible. However, an outdated method existed that allowed this functionality in Chrome.

Deprecated Chrome Method

As per the HTML5 W3C Working Draft, Interactive Content elements like select can be activated through various means, including keyboard, mouse clicks, and programmatically.

Using document.createEvent() and .dispatchEvent(), it was possible to generate a synthetic click event and display the options on mouseover.

Implementation

A sample implementation included the following steps:

1. Define a function showDropdown that creates a MouseEvent with a 'mousedown' type and dispatches it on the select element.
2. On a button click event, call the showDropdown function to display the options.

Limitations

Despite its technical feasibility, this method was deprecated and does not work in modern browsers. It also had the caveat of only functioning in Chrome and relying on a behavior that was not officially supported.

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