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This post is part of my Today I learned series in which I share all my web development learnings.

Today I was reading an issue of Šime Vidas' great Web Platform news. He describes something that was news to me – datalist elements not only provide values that can be chosen but also have a mechanism to show labels, too.

<label>
 Animal:
 <input name=animal list=animals>
</label>
<datalist id=animals>
  <option value="Dog">🐶
  <option value="Cat">🐱
  <option value="Duck">🦆
</datalist>

The markup above results in the following:

Input field with auto-completion including values and labels

That's very cool in my opinion. :)

But heads-up: before you jump onto using this - make sure to read Šime's article about it. Currently, there is a Firefox bug that troubles user experience tremendously.

If you want to play around with it and see it in action you can have a look at this CodePen.

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About Stefan Judis

Frontend nerd with over ten years of experience, freelance dev, "Today I Learned" blogger, conference speaker, and Open Source maintainer.

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