HTML Select not working in Android

Question

I have a super basic HTML select form field -

<select>
  <option value='1'>1</option>
  <option value='2'>2</option>
  <option value='3'>3</option>
</select>

But for some reason when i tap on them nothing happens. This is happening in a WebView on Android 2.2.2

strange thing is that SOMETIMES they do work...

Answer 1

Do you have user-scalable=0; in your meta tag? If so, try user-scalable=yes;

Answer 2

This seems to be an infamous problem on Android 2.x, according to the jquery mobile team this particular behaviour is caused as follows:

A fixed element that contains an absolute positioned element, which itself contains an absolute positioned element, will cause select menus on the page to stop responding altogether.

The complete quirk seems best described here.

So most likely it's the encapsulation and styles of the other elements on your page causing this. A comfortable alternative around this would be to use some plugin to replace the native dropdown, so you wouldn't have to worry about and continously retest the drowdown functionality, for example the selectBox-Plugin in jq UI (now intel appframework)