How to add default text to HTML ? Asked Dec 17 '13 at 19:13 Active Dec 17 '13 at 19:32 Viewed 6,764 times 2 0 I need to add some default text to a HTML select box. The placeholder tag which works with input doesn't seam to work whit this one? This works <td><input type="text" placeholder="<?php echo $lang ['your_website']; ?>"/></td> This doesn't work <td><select type="text" placeholder="<?php echo $lang ['select']; ?>"/></td> How can I fix this? javascript php jquery html edited Dec 17 '13 at 19:31 Stefan Weiss asked Dec 17 '13 at 19:13 Stefan Weiss 313 1 6 15 3 This doesn't make any sense. You provide a set of options for the select and one of them must be selected. – Quentin Dec 17 '13 at 19:15 3 You appear to be abusing `placeholder` as if it were a ``. Don't do that, it causes accessibility problems. – Quentin Dec 17 '13 at 19:16 1 You may want to try this: [ placeholder](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5805059/select-placeholder). – Farce Dec 17 '13 at 19:17

Answer 1

Are you looking for the selected attribute?

<select>
    <option selected="selected">Select Country</option>
    <option>United States</option>
    <option>Mexico</option>
</select>

See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/option

Answer 2

I think you can use it like this:

<select>
    <option selected="selected">Default Option</option>
    <option>1</option>
    <option>2</option>
</select>

ie, use selected="selected" for the option you want to be the default.

or you may try this:

<select>
    <option value="" disabled selected>Default Option</option>
    <option value="1">1</option>
</select>