<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xhtml1-20000126/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <title>Title</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" /> <script type="text/javascript"> //Hook the onload event. window.onload = function() { //Then hook the onchange event of the select box. document.getElementById("select1").onchange=function(e) { if (! e)//Fix for IE. e = event; element = e.target || e.srcElement;//Another fix for IE. //Set the content of 'span1' to the value of the seleted item. document.getElementById("span1").innerHTML = element.value; }; }; </script> </head> <body> <select id="select1" name="whatever"> <option value="1">Option 1</option> <option value="2">Option 2</option> <option value="3">Option 3</option> </select> The selected element is <strong>#<span id="span1">1</span></strong> </body></html>