width drop down menu

possible solutions...?

[pardo]

We are in the design stage for a new website for one of our clients and have to solve a problem with dynamic content that can be selected from a dropdown menu. The dropdown menu is in the left navigation bar with a fixed width of 200 px (or something...). This will be filled with dynamic content that can have many characters. If we make it a fixed width the characters on the right are not visible and will give problems with:

blue widget 1
red widget 2
deep blue widgets created on a sunny afternoon
deep blue widgets created on a sunny morning

The users probably see 'deep blue widgets created' and cannot choose properly.

Anyone got a solution?

Can stickymail for details/design and real world sample...

thanks in advance!

[Alternative Future]

Hi pardo,

This problem only occurs in IE yes? NS extends the dropped selection width according to the widest field. If my memory serves me right, the only way of allowing IE to extend to show all, is by either setting the <select> to the widest occurrence of the dropped options (and this is not really an option), or creating a custom select box with the use of both CSS and JavaScript. The later suggestion can be a little painful for both usage and creation. I don't think there are any other ways of getting the desired effect in IE.

-George