Combo Box with titles

Is this even possible?

[TrinkDawg]

Hi all, I have been searching all over for a way to do this, and I was wondering if anyone has ever seen it done:

I have a need to display a combo box with very short names in the list. However, when the list is pulled down and being moused over, my customer would like a longer description to be displayed. I have tried putting titles and mouseover events on my select tag and on the option tags to no avail in IE6. I have read in several places that NS6+ will fire mouseover events on options, but it is looking to me like IE will not.

Has anyone ever seen this done using a select and options (in other words, without creating something that looks like a combo box but isn't)? Can anyone confirm or deny that IE will not support mouseover events on select lists? Any help or points in the right direction would be great. Thanks.

[DrDoc]

Why not just assign a width to the select box?

[TrinkDawg]

The select box will be in a table of data on a screen where space is precious, hence the requirement to show very short names or abbreviations. The tip that will pop up will be like a definition of whatever term is being hovered over in the select box. Resizing the box to the width of the definition will not work, but thanks for the suggestion. Others?