Select box elements and :after

Question

Why doesnt it work? Is there a work around for this without adding an extra element?

http://jsfiddle.net/86gb2/

Answer 1

In your fiddle the following declaration is probably not doing what you expect.

select:after {content: "This doesn't work";}

This will actually append the text after the content of the select box, not after the select box itself. So that text is being added after the last option in the markup. (Which of course is neither valid, nor will it be rendered by the browser.)

In other words if you had this markup:

<a href="#">My link</a>

and this CSS:

a:after {content: " has now been appended to";}

What is actually happening is this:

<a href="#">My link has now been appended to</a>