This is maddening to me. I have a DCT with multiple select dropdowns that display options for colors. These select lists are populated by the same function, which is basically a javascript function that takes a constant array of color values and utilizes the javascript item.addOption() function to populate the select lists. One of the items is in a container that is displayed if a user selects a certain radio button value. In that color dropdown, all the colors appear with no blank option at the beginning, so the value you see initially in the dropdown container is the first color (red). I populate that one on form initialization. However another color dropdown exists in a repeating container that initially has 0 replicants, so I populate that select list's options on the onReplicantAdded event. This dropdown has a blank first option so you see no value when the dropdown appears, but if you open the dropdown you can see the rest of the list.
My fascination is why do these select lists behave differently? I would prefer to have the blank option as the first option so the user does not get the false sense that they selected the first option in the list (red) since it shows in the display. If I insert a blank option into my array of values for populating the list, I do see a blank as the first option in the list that used to show red, but now the other list has 2 blanks in the beginning of the list.
I can't believe no one else has had to deal with this nonsense. Is there anything I can do to make these lists display the same way? Or is this a bug that's been around since as far back as 6.1 (there's an old DevNet article that I think states this same issue, just not as eloquently as I just did). Before I open a case and have to send them my entire backing store, I'm hoping someone here may have a solution.
EDIT: I have tried making the item required and not required - there's no difference in how the options show up.
