Funky jQuery mouseleave behavior

Question

I have a menu-like drop down container that hides via binding the "mouseleave" event.

<div id="container">
<select>
    <option>1</option>
    <option>2</option>
    <option>3</option>
    <option>4</option>
    <option>5</option>
</select>
</div>

The problem I am having is when my container's child elements contain a SELECT object where the OPTIONS of the SELECT physically extend outside the bounds of the container. Consequently, hovering over the OPTIONS outside of the bounds trigger the "mouseleave" event to fire and close my drop down. The SELECT is a child of the container, so in this case I would expect the mouseleave event to recognize this.

Answer 1

Perhaps when the dropdown is expanded you could set a flag. Clear the flag when an item is selected. When a mouseleave occurs, don't hide the menu unless the flag is clear.

I always get nervous about hacking UI events to this degree though, since it's likely you'll end up leaving some browser somewhere in a totally unusable state.

Answer 2

Most renderers (all except Gecko, I think) implement opened <select> menus and their options in a separate "window", not as elements on the page. The page is, then, not necessarily aware of the user's interaction with an open <select> menu. It's very unlikely that you'll be able to achieve the desired effect across all the major browsers...

Edit: ... but maybe so. This works for me in Safari and Firefox. I can't test in IE right now, but give it a shot:

var timer;
$('#container').mouseleave(function(e) {
    if($(e.target).parents('#container').length) {
        return;
    }
    timer = setTimeout(function() {
        $('#container select').blur();
    }, 50);
}).mouseenter(function(e) {
    if(timer) {
        clearTimeout(timer);
    }
});

Edit 2: actually, Safari doesn't fire mouseleave (or mouseout) at all when the <select> "window" is open.

Answer 3

Thanks eyelidlessness! I actually found another answer to this problem last night that is very similar to what you posted.

.bind("mouseleave", function(e) { // ANSWER HERE!!!
    if (!e.fromElement.length) {
        _state.filterTrigger.data("open", false);
        setTimeout(function() { _toggleFilter(_state.filterTrigger); }, 2000);
    }
});

The e.fromElement object gives the count of OPTION objects in the SELECT. This object is undefined for other HTML tags. I haven't tried your solution but this works for me as well.