selected option values not being captured by form processing software

Hi, Working on a code that uses a select/option field. All my other fields are passing through to the form processing software just fine. Meloni's PHP Essentials does this funky thing, declaring each function value as selected or not although she shows it with the individual values not with variable - and I don't understand why she is doing that - I don't see it anywhere else. What I do know is whether I try her if_else selected method or without, my value is not being passed through http. echo "<td width=\"550\" align=\"left\"><select name=\"select_product\">"; echo "<option value=\"\">Cat. ID No? Description Pkg Size Price</option>"; while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { $catid[] = $row["Cat_ID"]; } for ($i=0; $i < sizeof($catid); $i++) { $cat = $catid[$i]; if($select_product =="cat") { echo "<option value=\"$cat\" selected>$cat</option>"; } else { echo "<option value=\"$cat\">$cat</option>"; } Thanks, Nicole -- ######################## Nicole Lallande nicole@nmlconsulting.com 760.753.6766 ########################