How to remove the background of a select input box in CSS
The default styling of HTML form elements can often be a bit boring and uninspired. One element that often needs design improvements is the select input box, which is used to present the user with a list of options to choose from. In this article, we will show you how to remove the default background of a select input box using CSS.
By doing this, you will be able to customize the appearance of your selection input to make it more visually appealing and consistent with the overall design of your website or application.
Various Inputs fields in CSS
Let us first understand the basic knowledge that, we need to have before moving on to solving this problem. The first thing we need to know is, what are inputs in a web page? Any intractable section of the website through which the user can enter and submit data is called input field in a website.
Different types of input are provided in HTML. For example, text area, radio button, select option and so on. Each input has a different default style. In many cases, we need to use custom styles to give our website impact and differentiate it from other websites.
Examples of some common input fields used in websites are shown below.
<form action="someAction"> <label for="YourName">Your First name:</label> <input type="text" id="YourName" name="YourName"><br><br> <label for="YourLastName">Your Last name:</label> <input type="text" id="YourLastName" name="YourLastName"><br><br> <input type="submit" value="Submit"> </form>
The second thing we need to know is the "status" about these inputs. Whenever we interact with the input field to enter some data, the input field is called "active" state, but if the input field is not touched, it is called "inactive"state. Another term used to describe them is "focused" and "unfocused" states. By default, all inputs are unfocused.
Now we can start the solution to this problem. CSS provides us with various "pseudo-classes" to position different or special states of certain input fields. One of the classes is the focus pseudo-class. It is applied to elements that are in the "focused" state on the site, which means the user interacts with the element by clicking on it with the keyboard or mouse. We will make use of this pseudo-class in order to remove the input background while in focus. To do this, we will change the default style to achieve our goal.
But this only works for input types entered by the user. Often, websites contain drop-down lists that contain some pre-existing list of options and the user can select one or more from the given list.
Like other input forms, it is also an input field and has a default style associated with it. We can create custom dropdown list using select tag in html. It is mainly used to collect user data in forms. Below is an example of a dropdown list using select tag.
Example
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Select Without background</title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="contactForm" method="POST" action="">
<label for="movies">Which movie would you like to see?</label>
<select name="movies" id="movies">
<option value="a">Movie A</option>
<option value="b">Movie B</option>
<option value="c">Movie C</option>
<option value="d">Movie D</option>
</select>
<br />
</form>
</body>
</html>
In the above example, we provided the select tag a name and an id. The name attribute is for refer it after its submission by user, while the id attribute is used to access the data that will be sent after submission. To provide the options that are available for the user to choose we use the option tag. We can also use several other attributes to make the list more accessible and distinct.
The Chinese translation ofExample
is:Example
In the example below, we can use –webkit-appearance : none to completely remove the background.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Select Without background</title>
<style>
.form-control:focus,
.form-control:active {
background: transparent;
}
#movies,
#movies:focus,
#movies:active {
background: none;
-webkit-appearance: none;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<form id="contactForm" method="POST" action="">
<input
name="YourName"
type="text"
class="someClass"
placeholder="Can you please tell me your name :)"
required
/>
<br />
<input
name="YourEmail"
type="email"
class="someClass"
placeholder="Your email please :)"
/>
<br />
<label for="movies">Which movie would you like to see?</label>
<select name="movies" id="movies">
<option value="a">Movie A</option>
<option value="b">Movie B</option>
<option value="c">Movie C</option>
<option value="d">Movie D</option>
</select>
<br />
</form>
</body>
</html>
As we can already notice that the visual output of the example above is different and does not have that default grayish toned background color in it. Another unintuitive approach would be to use a div as a container for the select box. After that set a width restriction and hide the overflow, and let the select box's width be somewhat smaller than the container div. That way the default styled arrow will disappear from the webpage.
Please note that unlike single label positioning as done in this article, most developers use ids and classes to create common styles so that there is no need to repeat code in similar situations.
Conclusion
This article discusses solutions to the problem of removing input background in CSS. Along the way, we learned about input boxes, their types, their default styles, and their states. We also learned how to use pseudo-class selectors to target special states of elements.
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