Enhanced country selection with Css and Javascript

How many times you had to choose your country in a form, with a old, simple popup?

Time to change the way you choose your country (or anything else) with a bit of Css and Javascript.

I am showing the example in a iframe not to mess with WordPress styles.

As you can see, when you move the mouse over the text input, a list with (almost) every world country and flag appears, and when you click on a country, its ISO code is displayed into the text input.
When you move the mouse out of the country list, it closes.

How can it be made?

Let' see the content of the main page

HTML:
  1. <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
  2. <style type="text/css">
  3. body{margin:0px;font-family:verdana;font-size:11px;background-color:#e5e5e5}
  4. a{
  5.     position:relative;
  6.     z-index:24;
  7. }
  8. a:hover{
  9.     z-index: 25;
  10.     background-color: #ff0}
  11. a span{
  12.     display: none
  13. }
  14. a:hover span{
  15.     display: block;
  16.     position:absolute;
  17.     top: 10px;
  18.     left: 20px;
  19.     width: 200px;
  20.     border: 1px solid #000000;
  21. }
  22.  
  23. input{
  24.     width:30px;
  25.     font-family:verdana
  26. }
  27.  
  28. </style>
  29. </head>
  30.     <form id="countrysel" method="get" name="countrysel">
  31.         Select country: <a href="javascript:void(0)"><input type="text" name="country" readonly><span><iframe src="index.html" frameborder="0" scrolling="yes" height="150" width="220"></iframe></span></a>
  32.     </form>
  33.     other content here other content here other content here
  34. </body>
  35. </html>

The trick is in the <a> and <span> css use, with a display attribute changing on hover status.

It's easiest to see than to explain.

Let's look at line 34, when I call the iframe I simply load an ordered list with a javascript to communicate with the "parent" page.

HTML:
  1. <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
  2. <style type="text/css">
  3. body{margin:0px;background-color: #000000}
  4. ul{margin:0px;padding:0px;margin-left: 1px;padding-left: 0;list-style-type: none;font-family: verdana;font-size:11px;text-transform: capitalize;}
  5. img{ vertical-align: middle}
  6. a{display: block;width: 200px;background-color: #f5f5f5;padding:4px;}
  7. a:link, a:visited{color: #000000;text-decoration: none;}
  8. a:hover{background-color: #ffaf2e;color: #000000;font-weight:bold;}
  9. </style>
  10. </head>
  11. <li><a href = "javascript:void(0)" onclick = "parent.document.countrysel.country.value = 'af'"><img src="af.gif" alt="" width="16" height="11" border="0" /> afghanistan</a>
  12. <li><a href = "javascript:void(0)" onclick = "parent.document.countrysel.country.value = 'ax'"><img src="ax.gif" alt="" width="16" height="11" border="0" /> &aring;land islands</a>
  13. <li><a href = "javascript:void(0)" onclick = "parent.document.countrysel.country.value = 'al'"><img src="al.gif" alt="" width="16" height="11" border="0" /> albania</a>
  14. ...
  15. ...

Look how I set the menu starting with an unordered list with Css (lines 5-10) and how I pass ISO values to the parent page (line 15 for example).

You can download the whole work here, check 2 html files and give me feedback or suggestion about the use of this feature.

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11 Comment(s)

  1. Spiketmr | Aug 1, 2006 | Reply

    Great script. Thanks alot.

  2. Ajay | Aug 18, 2006 | Reply

    Gr8 work…Can i use it..in my commercial website..without much modification in the code.

  3. Emanuele Feronato | Aug 18, 2006 | Reply

    Of course… and do not forgeto to show me the final result

  4. metz | Sep 26, 2006 | Reply

    Bugs like a hillbilly in Opera.

  5. saeed | Jan 1, 2007 | Reply

    its very intersted

  6. Kerim Incedayi | Jan 2, 2007 | Reply

    doesnt work with IE7… but IE7 doesnt work much anyways so no worries.. lol :P

  7. Thomas | Sep 19, 2007 | Reply

    it does work in ie7, but ie7 that you used was probably beta…

    amazing! there’s great need for this in almost every website! thanks!

  8. Thomas | Sep 19, 2007 | Reply

    oh … i see what you mean, kerim. when i downloaded it and view it won’t work! sorry about that!

  9. Ste | Oct 13, 2007 | Reply

    Dont work in firefox!!!

  10. Beenish | Oct 30, 2007 | Reply

    Please provide me the source code for this.
    I have a big list of values, which i want
    to display like this.
    Thanks,
    Ben

  11. Kevin | Nov 22, 2007 | Reply

    Can you add a state/territory and zip code. Thank you

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