Setting a select by label via jquery in 1.4

Answer 1

$('#c').val('325');

or

// earlier - define a text-equals selector
jQuery.extend(jQuery.expr[":"], {
  "text-equals": function (a, i, m) {
    return (a.textContent||a.innerText||jQuery(a).text()||'')==m[3];
  }
});

// later - use it
$red = $('#c option:text-equals(Red)');
$('#c').val($red.val());

The custom selector is one possibility. You could also do exactly the same thing in a filter() callback, for example.