Formatting text elements of <option> tags

[nblew]

Does anyone know of any way to italicize the text of an option tag? Specifically, I'm trying to italicize some entries in a select menu while leaving others alone. I have already attempted a few variations on the following with no success:

<select name="mySelectMenu">

<option> Blue pencils </option>
<option><i>Red pencils</i> </option>
<option><i>Green pencils</i></option>
<option> Yellow pencils </option>

</select>


The desired result would be that only the 2nd and 3rd options in the dropdown menu would be italicized.

Many thanks for any help provided...

[Khalid Ali]

you will need to set the style for the
select tag and it will reflect on options.

[fredmv]

Originally posted by Khalid Ali
you will need to set the style for the select tag

You could style the <select> element, however, the original poster implies that they want only specific options to be displayed as italic, and thus you must style the <option> element instead because styling <select> would result in all options becoming styled. All you'd need is:

<select>
	<option value="foo">bar</option>
	<option value="foo" class="i">bar</option>
	<option value="foo" class="i">bar</option>
	<option value="foo">bar</option>
</select>

Along with the following CSS:

<style type="text/css">
/*<![CDATA[*/
	.i { font-style: italic; }
/*]]>*/
</style>

[ray326]

You might want to check this out as an example. IE's support of the widget styles is quite pitiful so look at it with Mozilla or Firefox.