Chosen

Chosen is a jQuery plugin that makes long, unwieldy select boxes much more user-friendly.

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

Hide Search on Single Select

The disable_search_threshold option can be specified to hide the search input on single selects if there are fewer than (n) options.

$(".chosen-select").chosen({disable_search_threshold: 10});

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 an Option" or "Select Some Options" depending on whether the select is single or multiple. You can change these elements in the plugin js file as you see fit.

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

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

No Results Text Support

Setting the "No results" search text is as easy as passing an option when you create Chosen:

 $(".chosen-select").chosen({no_results_text: "Oops, nothing found!"}); 

Single Select
Multiple Select

Limit Selected Options in Multiselect

You can easily limit how many options the user can select:

$(".chosen-select").chosen({max_selected_options: 5});

If you try to select another option with limit reached chosen:maxselected event is triggered:

 $(".chosen-select").bind("chosen:maxselected", function () { ... }); 

Allow Deselect on Single Selects

When a single select box isn't a required field, you can set allow_single_deselect: true and Chosen will add a UI element for option deselection. This will only work if the first option has blank text.