SO Question

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7373058

by Kaleb Hornsby

HTML

<select id="sel">
    <option>Cat</option>
    <option>Dog</option>
    <option>Fish</option>
</select>

JavaScript

var val = "Fish";
for(var i, j = 0; i = sel.options[j]; j++) {
    if(i.value == val) {
        sel.selectedIndex = j;
        break;
    }
}