Jquery autocomplete styling

Question

While styling the jQuery autocomplete plugin, I get the following HTML code hardwired to my page:

Answer 1

jQuery autocomplete needs to set some inline styles to position the drop down list under the text box and size it equally.

It doesn't set anything else, so it's completely up to you to provide visual styling of it by setting styles of those classes that are added to it (ie. ui-autocomplete).

Advice

What I'm trying to tell you is this: set the visual aspects of the drop down list that gets displayed and don't worry about positioning and sizing inline styles.

Need to change positioning

If you do need to override positioning and sizing of this element you can always set your styles as !important.

ul.ui-autocomplete
{
    position: absolute;
    left: 100px!important;
    top: 0!important;
    ...
}

Additional edit

Setting margin-top doesn't do anything since it calculates position every single time it displays the drop down. But you can try setting this:

.ui-autocomplete
{
    border-top:5px solid transparent!important;
}

This actually does the trick.

Answer 2

This can be done by implementing some changes in the "open" method of Autocomplete.

consider this example:

$('#search_text_box').autocomplete({
        source: "<?= $this->baseUrl('items/autocomplete');?>",
        minLength: 2,
        search: function(){
            //$ulForResults.empty();
        },
        'open': function(e, ui) {
            $('.ui-autocomplete').css('top', $("ul.ui-autocomplete").cssUnit('top')[0] + 4);
            $('.ui-autocomplete').css('left', $("ul.ui-autocomplete").cssUnit('left')[0] - 2);
            $('.ui-autocomplete').append("<div id='autofill_results'><span>2,000</span> results found, showing <span>10</span></div>");
        }
    }).data( "autocomplete" )._renderItem = function( ul, item ) {
            return $( "<li></li>" ).data( "item.autocomplete", item ).append( "<a>" + item.name + "</a>" ).appendTo( ul );
    };

In this way by changing how and where your autocomplete appears. The 'ul' that shows autocomplete info has class 'ui-autocomplete' you can manipulate its css in this function to show the drop down the way you want.