Chosen - a JavaScript plugin for jQuery and Prototype

Chosen is a JavaScript plug-in for Prototype, jQuery & Mootools that makes long, unwieldy select boxes much more user-friendly.

Project page on GitHub

Standard Select

Turns This

Into This

Multiple Select

Turns This

Into This

<optgroup> Support

Single Select with Groups

Multiple Select with Groups

Selected and Disabled Support

Chosen automatically highlights selected options and removes disabled options.

Single Select

Multiple Select with Groups

Default Text Support

Chosen automatically sets the default field text ("Choose a country...") by reading the select element's data-placeholder value. If no data-placeholder value is present, it will default to "Select Some Option" or "Select Some Options" depending on whether the select is single or multiple. You can change these elements in the plug-in js file as you see fit.

<select data-placeholder="Choose a country..." style="width:350px;" multiple class="chzn-select">

Note: on single selects, the first element is assumed to be selected by the browser. To take advantage of the default text support, you will need to include a blank option as the first element of your select list.

Right to Left Support

Chosen supports right to left select boxes too. just add "chzn-rtl" in addition to "chzn-select" to your select tags and you are good to go.

<select class="chzn-select chzn-rtl">

Single right to left select

Multiple right to left select

Change / Update Events

Form Field Change

When working with form fields, you often want to perform some behavior after a value has been selected or deselected. Whenever a user selects a field in Chosen, it triggers a "change" event* on the original form field. That let's you do something like this:

$("form_field").addEvent('change', … );

Note: Prototype doesn't offer support for triggering standard browser events. Event.simulate is required to trigger the change event when using the Prototype version.
Updating Chosen Dynamically

If you need to update the options in your select field and want Chosen to pick up the changes, you'll need to trigger the "liszt:updated" event on the field. Chosen will re-build itself based on the updated content.
- MooTools Version: $("form_field").fireEvent("liszt:updated");
- jQuery Version: $("#form_field").trigger("liszt:updated");
- Prototype Version: Event.fire($("form_field"), "liszt:updated");

Why use Chosen?

User Friendly

Instead of forcing your users to scroll through a giant list of items, they can just start typing the name of the item they were looking for. Non-matching entries are removed from view and choices can be selected using enter or mouse click.
Progressive Enhancement

Because chosen replaces normal html select fields, you don't need to do anything special to make it work for browsers without JavaScript. You don't need to do anything special on the back end to handle the data either -- the form field still gets submitted as normal.
Painless Setup

Add Chosen's files to your app and trigger the plugin (see Setup below). Chosen automatically respects optgroups, selected state, the multiple attribute and browser tab order. You don't need to do anything else except customize the style as you see fit.

Setup (for MooTools)

Using Chosen is easy as can be.

Download the plugin and copy the chosen files to your app.
Activate the plugin on the select boxes of your choice:
Single Select: new Chosen($('chzn-select-id'));
Shortcut for multiple selects at once: $$(".chzn-select").chosen();
Disco.

FAQs

Something doesn't work. Can you fix it?

Yes! Please report all issues using the GitHub issue tracking tool. Please include the plugin version (jQuery or Prototype), browser and OS. The more information provided, the easier it is to fix a problem.
What browsers are supported?

All modern browsers are support (Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE9). Legacy support for IE8 is also enabled.

Credits

Built by Harvest
Concept and development by Patrick Filler
Design and CSS by Matthew Lettini
Port to MooTools by Jules Janssen and Jonnathan Soares

Chosen is a JavaScript plug-in for Prototype, jQuery & Mootools that makes long, unwieldy select boxes much more user-friendly.

Standard Select

Multiple Select

<optgroup> Support

Selected and Disabled Support

Default Text Support

Right to Left Support

Change / Update Events

Form Field Change

Updating Chosen Dynamically

Why use Chosen?

User Friendly

Progressive Enhancement

Painless Setup

Setup (for MooTools)

FAQs

Something doesn't work. Can you fix it?

What browsers are supported?

Credits