Code Snippet

Styled Popup Menu

This idea is from Veer.com and how they handle the dropdowns for things like T-Shirt sizes. Thank you to Dennis Sa.

View Demo

HTML

We'll wrap a regular text input inside an <div>, which also contains an unordered list which will represent the values for the popup menu.

<div class="size">
	<input type="text" name="test" value="choose your size" class="field" readonly="readonly" />
	<ul class="list">
		<li>Male - M</li>
		<li>Female - M</li>
		<li>Male - S</li>
		<li>Female - S</li>
	</ul>
</div>

CSS

The lists will be hidden by default, but still all styled up and ready to go when a click triggers them to be shown.

.size { position:relative }
.size .field {
	width:300px; background:#EC6603; color:#fff; padding:5px; border:none; cursor:pointer;
	font-family:'lucida sans unicode',sans-serif; font-size:1em;
	border:solid 1px #EC6603;
	-webkit-transition: all .4s ease-in-out;
	transition: all .4s ease-in-out;
}
.size .field:hover {
	border:solid 1px #fff;
	-moz-box-shadow:0 0 5px #999; -webkit-box-shadow:0 0 5px #999; box-shadow:0 0 5px #999
}
.size>ul.list { display:none;
	position:absolute; left:30px; top:-30px; z-index:999;
	width:300px;
	margin:0; padding:10px; list-style:none;
	background:#fff; color:#333;
	-moz-border-radius:5px; -webkit-border-radius:5px; border-radius:5px;
	-moz-box-shadow:0 0 5px #999; -webkit-box-shadow:0 0 5px #999; box-shadow:0 0 5px #999
}
.size>ul.list li {
	padding:10px;
	border-bottom: solid 1px #ccc;
}
.size>ul.list li:hover {
	background:#EC6603; color:#fff;
}
.size>ul.list li:last-child { border:none }

jQuery

We'll throw a quick plugin together, so that this functionality can be called on any div wrapper that contains this same HTML setup.=

(function($){
	$.fn.styleddropdown = function(){
		return this.each(function(){
			var obj = $(this)
			obj.find('.field').click(function() { //onclick event, 'list' fadein
			obj.find('.list').fadeIn(400);

			$(document).keyup(function(event) { //keypress event, fadeout on 'escape'
				if(event.keyCode == 27) {
				obj.find('.list').fadeOut(400);
				}
			});

			obj.find('.list').hover(function(){ },
				function(){
					$(this).fadeOut(400);
				});
			});

			obj.find('.list li').click(function() { //onclick event, change field value with selected 'list' item and fadeout 'list'
			obj.find('.field')
				.val($(this).html())
				.css({
					'background':'#fff',
					'color':'#333'
				});
			obj.find('.list').fadeOut(400);
			});
		});
	};
})(jQuery);

Usage

Then we just call the plugin, when the DOM is ready of course.

$(function(){
	$('.size').styleddropdown();
});