Open Select using Javascript/jQuery?

Question

Is there a way to open a select box using Javascript (and jQuery)?

<select style="width:150px;">
    <option value="1">1</option>
    <option value="2">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc arcu nunc, rhoncus ac dignissim at, rhoncus ac tellus.</option>
    <option value="3">3</option>
</select>

I have to open my select, cause of IE bug. All versions of IE (6,7,8) cut my options. As far as I know, there is no CSS bugfix for this. At the moment I try to do the following:

var original_width = 0;
var selected_val = false;

if (jQuery.browser.msie) {
    $('select').click(function(){
        if (selected_val == false){
            if(original_width == 0)
                original_width = $(this).width();

            $(this).css({
                'position' : 'absolute',
                'width' : 'auto'
            });
        }else{
            $(this).css({
                'position' : 'relative',
                'width' : original_width
            });
            selected_val = false;
        }
    });

    $('select').blur(function(){
        $(this).css({
            'position' : 'relative',
            'width' : original_width
        });
    });

    $('select').blur(function(){
        $(this).css({
            'position' : 'relative',
            'width' : original_width
        });
    });
            
    $('select').change(function(){
        $(this).css({
            'position' : 'relative',
            'width' : original_width
        });
    });

    $('select option').click(function(){
        $(this).css({
            'position' : 'relative',
            'width' : original_width
        });
    
        selected_val = true;
    });

}

But clicking on my select the first time will change the width of the select but I have to click again to open it.

Answer 1

Instead of using click, you could use the mousedown handler to capture the mousedown event. mousedown fires before click, so you could call stopPropogation to break the event queue.