Getting value of select (dropdown) before change

Answer 1

please don't use a global var for this - store the prev value at the data here is an example: http://jsbin.com/uqupu3/2/edit

the code for ref:

$(document).ready(function(){
  var sel = $("#sel");
  sel.data("prev",sel.val());

  sel.change(function(data){
     var jqThis = $(this);
     alert(jqThis.data("prev"));
     jqThis.data("prev",jqThis.val());
  });
});

just saw that you have many selects on page - this approach will also work for you since for each select you will store the prev value on the data of the select