TIL: Datalist elements can have values and labels

#html #webdev

Today I was reading an issue of Šime Vidas' great Web Platform news. He describes something that was news to me – datalist elements not only provide values that can be chosen but also have a mechanism to show labels, too.

<label>
 Animal:
 <input name=animal list=animals>
</label>
<datalist id=animals>
  <option value="Dog">🐶
  <option value="Cat">🐱
  <option value="Duck">🦆
</datalist>

The markup above results in the following:

That's very cool in my opinion. :)

But heads-up: before you jump onto using this - make sure to read Šime's article about it. Currently, there is a Firefox bug that troubles user experience tremendously.

If you want to play around with it and see it in action you can have a look at this CodePen.