Enable a text field when user selects other from drop down

**reli4nt** · 05-02-2006, 12:34 AM

Can anyone point me in the right direction to figure this one out? I have seen it doen a million times but now I can't seem to find any examples, and everything Ive tried thus far has ended up lame.

**ibbo** · 05-02-2006, 09:48 AM

document.myform.textfield_id.disabled = false;

Assuming your using a form that is. The form name and id would be 'myform' the textfie ld would be the 'textfield_id'.

Initially you could make this disabled by default so that when you have your selection you then call document.myform.textfield_id.disabled = false; and it will be active.

Might take a tinkering or two but it should be fine.

Ibbo

**reli4nt** · 04:08 PM

Thanks, I think I get that part.

I'm having trouble understanding how to affect one with the other.

In the option tags of the drop down I put

Code:

 onchange="enableother()"

then I made a simple function to "allegedly" switch the value of the input field

Code:

function enableother()
{
    if (document.formname.selectname == 'other')
    {
        document.formname.fieldname.disable = false
    }
    else
    {
        document.formname.fieldname.disable = true
    }
}

of course the whole thing just ignores me and I'm not entirely sure why. Sorry for being such a n00b but I really don't understand the logic behind JavaScript yet.

Anyone know what I'm missing and why?

**funkdaddu** · 05-03-2006, 02:09 PM

This should work for what you want:

HTML Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<html>

	<head>
		<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1">
		<title>Untitled Page</title>
		<script type="text/javascript"><!--
function dropdown(option) {
	if (option == "name") {
		document.FormName.textfieldName.disabled = false;
	} else {
		document.FormName.textfieldName.disabled = true;
	}
}
//-->
</script>
	</head>

	<body bgcolor="#ffffff">
		<form id="FormName" action="" method="get" name="FormName">
			<select name="selectName" size="1" onchange="dropdown(this.value);">
				<option>Choose...</option>
				<option value="name">Your Name</option>
				<option value="age">Your Age</option>
			</select> <input type="text" name="textfieldName" disabled size="24">
		</form>
	</body>

</html>

**reli4nt** · 05-03-2006, 02:20 PM

AHA! You got it. Thanks.

I see I was on the right track at least.

So "this" is automatic resource in JavaScript?

In someway s JS is so similar to php but the context, or the environment, feels so foreign to me.

So simple too.

Thanks again!