A drop-down menu field presents the user with a list of choices in drop-down menu style.
You can set the properties of a drop-down menu field to let the user select many choices. This is an alternative method to using a set of check box form fields. You can also set the properties of a drop-down menu field to limit the user to one choice. This is an alternate method to using a set of radio button fields. Drop-down menu fields take up less room in a form than check boxes or radio buttons, because the choices are usually not displayed in a Web browser until a user clicks the field.
When you configure a drop-down menu field, you assign it a name and height and you create a set of choices. You create each choice by clicking Add in the Drop-Down Menu Properties dialog box. Each choice has a name, an optional value, and an initial state: selected or not selected. Once you have added choices, you can easily rearrange them in the Drop-Down Menu Properties dialog box.
When a form containing a drop-down menu field is submitted by a user, the name of the form, followed by a list of the selected choices, is sent to the form handler. Selected choices are sent to the form handler by their names or their values if you assigned them.
Drop-down menus are not displayed the same way by all Web browsers. Also, most Web browsers’ display of a drop-down menu is affected by the menu’s height and the number of selections a user can make.