<select> with size > 1 is not specified

[dandclark]

<select size="n"> with n > 1 has an appearance similar to <select multiple>, with no button and no light dismiss. It's not quite the same as multiple though, since only one option can be specified. The current anatomy doesn't discuss size > 1 at all; this should be added.

That is, assuming this is a modality that we even want to support in the new <select>? Not sure how commonly this is actually used.

[una]

size isn't as straightforward with our proposal considering we'd want the children to be stylable (padding, border, content etc.). Supporting the size attribute will be determined based on the if we want the new <select> to be full interoperable with existing properties or not. Just bringing up the additional challenge here.

[scottaohara]

if there ends up being a separate listbox element (which seems a very good idea to me), then I don't see the reason to also have a size attribute on the new select. Authors could use the new select for a select that invokes a listbox popup... and a listbox for a static listbox.

Edit: i retract my statement about a listbox element being a good idea. i think we can do better.

[github-actions[bot]]

There hasn't been any discussion on this issue for a while, so we're marking it as stale. If you choose to kick off the discussion again, we'll remove the 'stale' label.

[josepharhar]

I'm guessing that like the existing <select> element, the size attribute would only apply to <selectmenu multiple>, which we have deferred, so I'm going to change the label from select to select-v2

[scottaohara]

I'd submit we disregard size, since it's purpose is to create a single-select in-page listbox.

rather, and why i edited my previous comment in this thread, because present scott is smarter than past scott, than support size there should probably be a new (better) element to facilitate what <select size=>1> achieves (awkwardly) today. and that elements is probably not selectmenu

[josepharhar]

I was talking to mason a while ago about the size attribute, and he thought it would be a bad idea since we would have to figure out exactly what the height of an option is and then set the height of the container based on that - but what if the height of the options changes in response to the container height? We would end up doing some sort of circular layout. The existing <select multiple> element doesn't have this problem since you can't really style it.

I think we should not support the size attribute for <selectlist>, <selectlist multiple>, or <listbox>.

[scottaohara]

agreed. size isn't really a necessary attribute to carry over - since it's the method to make a select element change from a trigger that invokes the listbox popup, to just displaying the element as a persistent listbox in the web page. outside of that, everything else it does can be handled with css.