NIST The selectedIndex attribute specifies the ordinal index of the selected option. If no element is selected -1 is returned. Retrieve the selectedIndex attribute from the second SELECT element and examine its value. Per http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#h-17.6.1, without an explicit selected attribute, user agent behavior is undefined. There is no way to coerce no option to be selected. Mary Brady 2002-02-22