This is no longer a bug. I'm keeping the gist for historical reasons, as it helped to get it fixed. Make sure to read the notes by the end of the post.
remove hide the select arrow in Firefox using -moz-appearance:none;
How to TL;DR (or, the fix)
- Set
-moz-appearance
tonone
. This will "reset" the styling of the element; - Set
text-indent
to0.01px
. This will "push" the text a tiny bit[1] to the right; - Set
text-overflow
to''
(an empty string). This will change anything that extends beyond the element's width to... nothing - and this includes the infamous arrow!
Continue reading for the full lowdown.
Background
I was experimenting on custom styling the <select>
elements of a form I was building. One of the things I tried implementing was truncating the text with an ellipsis in case it extended beyond the <select>
's width. It didn't look consistent through browsers, but I discovered something nice.
The bug
Firefox <select>
with appearance
attribute set to none
(Ubuntu):
Chrome <select>
with appearance
attribute set to none
(Ubuntu):
As this 2011 bug report states, there is an issue regarding Firefox's -moz-appearance
and <select>
elements: it was supposed to ditch the <select>
's arrow (like Chrome's implementation) but it simply doesn't. People were raging about the subject all over the internetz.
Live example
http://codepen.io/joaocunha/pen/qLgCG
(Firefox only, duh)
Final considerations
- Firefox doesn't remove the arrow, it hides it. You will have some white space on the right[2] (same width of the now-hidden arrow);
- Chrome removes the arrow by default with
-webkit-appearance:none;
instead of hiding. No white space on the right; - Chrome doesn't support the
text-overflow:''
. No evenly-cut text; - Your best bet is to set some
padding-right
in order to provide right space for your styled version of the arrow. Just keep in mind that Firefox will take the ghost arrow width into account; - Turns out that Windows doesn't require the
-moz-appearance: none;
declaration at all. Tested on 8; - Firefox for Android needs the whole
width
of the arrow astext-indent
. It means you need to set it to at least5px
, but take care since Firefox seems to double thetext-indent
value on<select>
elements. - Zooming out (ctrl mousewheeldown, ctrl -, etc) reveals[3] the default arrow. No big deal;
- The
appearance
attribute is not well supported through browsers, so take this workaround with a grain of salt when developing your crossbrowser solution.
Support
Tested on latest versions of Ubuntu, Windows, Mac and Android.
Follow me
Thanks
[1]Binyamin for improving it from 1px to 0.01px.
[2]RussellUresti for noticing the white space.
[3]MathiasaurusRex for noticing the zoom issue.
Notes
Edit 4: Mozilla released Firefox v35 and, indeed, the bug is patched. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/35
Edit 3: Mozilla addressed the issue! Target milestone is v35. Yay!
Edit 2: Todd Parker from Filament Group tweeted about a CSS only alternative that works pretty much everywhere. You can check it here.
Edit: this trick stopped working as of Firefox 30 realeased in 2014-06-10. Join the comments section to help finding an alternative, and please upvote the bug on Bugzilla for a definitive fix. If you now have double arrows on Firefox, this might solve your issue.
Don't use any other value of -moz-appearance
as the styles inherited are not customisable.
Doesn't work anymore, your codepen demo as well. Win7, firefox 30