Site Trick

The onChange event handler can be used to get the value from a select input list in several ways:

Using plain Javascript:
<select onchange="alert(this.options[this.selectedIndex].value)">
<option value="status">Status</option>
<option value="type">Type</option>
<option value="quantity">Quantity</option>
<option value="date">Order Date</option>
<option value="order_number">Order Number</option>
</select>

Try it:

this.options[this.selectedIndex].value gives you the value of this select field. You can also specify an id by using getElementById(id).options[getElementById(id).selectedIndex].value

Using the jQuery framework:
<select onchange="alert($(this).val())">
<option value="status">Status</option>
<option value="type">Type</option>
<option value="quantity">Quantity</option>
<option value="date">Order Date</option>
<option value="order_number">Order Number</option>
</select>

$(this).val() gives you the value of this select field when using jQuery. You can also specify the ID of the element such as: $('#order_by').val()