How do I make a placeholder for a 'select' box?

HTML Web Development Front End Technology

In HTML, placeholder attribute is present for creating a placeholder, but unfortunately it isn’t available for the select box.

Create Placeholder for select

We can use the option tag to define an option in a select list. The value attribute of the option tag is used for this. Here we have set List of Technologies as the placeholder text −

<option value="">List of Technologies</option>

Example

Let us now see the complete example −


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
   <style>
      select {
         appearance: none;
         background: yellow;
         width: 100%;
         height: 100%;
         color: black;
         cursor: pointer;
         border: 2px dashed orange;
         border-radius: 4px;
      }
      .select {
         position: relative;
         display: block;
         width: 10em;
         height: 3em;
         line-height: 3;
         overflow: hidden;
         border-radius: .25em;
         padding-bottom: 10px;
      }
   </style>
</head>
<body>
   <h1>Programming Courses</h1>
   <p>We have covered the following programming technologies:</p>
   <div class="select">
      <select name="st" id="st">
         <option value="">List of Technologies</option>
         <option value="1">Python</option>
         <option value="2">Java</option>
         <option value="3">C</option>
         <option value="4">C++</option>
         <option value="5">Ruby</option>
         <option value="6">Kotlin</option>
         <option value="7">GO</option>
         <option value="8">C#</option>
      </select>
   </div>
</body>
</html>

Output

Create Placeholder for select and disable it

Since the placeholder won’t be select by the user and is only for displaying a text, we need to disable it. We will disable it using the disabled attribute of the <option> tag. This attribute disables the option −

<option value="" disabled selected>Select any Technology</option>

Example

Let us see the example now −


<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
   <style>
      select {
         appearance: none;
         background: yellow;
         width: 100%;
         height: 100%;
         color: black;
         cursor: pointer;
         border: 2px dashed orange;
         border-radius: 4px;
      }
      .select {
         position: relative;
         display: block;
         width: 10em;
         height: 3em;
         line-height: 3;
         overflow: hidden;
         border-radius: .25em;
         padding-bottom: 10px;
      }
   </style>
</head>
<body>
   <h1>Programming Courses</h1>
   <p>We have covered the following programming technologies:</p>
   <div class="select">
      <select name="st" id="st">
         <option value="" disabled selected>Select any Technology</option>
         <option value="1">Python</option>
         <option value="2">Java</option>
         <option value="3">C</option>
         <option value="4">C++</option>
         <option value="5">Ruby</option>
         <option value="6">Kotlin</option>
         <option value="7">GO</option>
         <option value="8">C#</option>
      </select>
   </div>
</body>
</html>