What is the best practice to pre-select an <option>
in a <select>
?
According to different websites, both works. But which one is better? the most compatible?
<option selected="selected">Foo</option>
<option selected>Bar</option>
What is the best practice to pre-select an <option>
in a <select>
?
According to different websites, both works. But which one is better? the most compatible?
<option selected="selected">Foo</option>
<option selected>Bar</option>
According to the HTML4 standard, using
selected
implies it isselected="selected"
. So the standard already defines both are supported. Their code sample already includes a code block just usingselected
.For compatibility with XHTML (specifically XML is the 'problem' here), there is a
selected="selected"
option.HTML5 also defines
selected
on its own is valid, so no need to worry.If you are writing XHTML,
selected="selected"
is required.If you are writing HTML,
selected
is fewer keystrokes and fewer bytes.Neither has better compatibility with browsers.