Developing a drop-down list component
A drop-down list is a common component used in many places. Although there’s a native select component for basic use cases, a more advanced version offering more control over each option provides a better user experience.
When creating one from scratch, a complete implementation requires more effort than it appears at first glance. It’s essential to consider keyboard navigation, accessibility (for instance, screen reader compatibility), and usability on mobile devices, among others.
We’ll begin with a simple, desktop version that only supports mouse clicks, gradually building in more features to make it realistic. Note that the goal here is to reveal a few software design patterns rather than teach you how to build a drop-down list for production use (actually, I don’t recommend doing this from scratch and would instead suggest using more mature libraries...
