The Scrolling Menu

As with all forms, the scrolling menu begins with the <FORM> tag. This is followed by <SELECT MULTIPLE SIZE="x">, where x is the number of options (lines) you'd like to appear at once. (The pulldown menu, you'll recall, is created by the <SELECT > tag without the MULTIPLE attribute.)

The <SELECT > tag is then followed by a series of <OPTION> tags, which set off each menu item. As with the pulldown menu, you can create the illusion of a coherent paragraph within a scrolling menu, as long as you add the line breaks yourself, beginning each line with the option tag.

This approach turns the scrolling menu into something of a surrogate frame - a container for sidebars or tangents that don't seem to fit anywhere else....

The HTML for a scrolling menu might look something like this:

<FORM>
    <SELECT MULTIPLE SIZE="6">
        <OPTION> adventurous
        <OPTION> bitter
        <OPTION> cerebral
        <OPTION> desperate
        <OPTION> emotional
        <OPTION> flirty
        <OPTION> historical
        <OPTION> irreverent
    </SELECT>
</FORM>

The result below:

adventurous bitter cerebral desperate emotional flirty historical irreverent

Note: Again, the SIZE attribute lets us set how many options (or lines) can appear at once. In other words, it lets you set the height of the menu; the width will be determined by the length (in characters) of the longest menu item.