Get drop down value

If your dropdown is something like this:

<select id="thedropdown">
  <option value="1">one</option>
  <option value="2">two</option>
</select>

Then you would use something like:

var a = document.getElementById("thedropdown");
alert(a.options[a.selectedIndex].value);

But a library like jQuery simplifies things:

alert($('#thedropdown').val());