asp.net mvc How to add placeholder for html.dropdownlist

A quick and (not so) dirty solution involving jQuery.

Instead of adding a dummy item at the start of the list, prepend a new option that is disabled. The main advantage is that you don't have to mess with a dummy item in your list, and most important, you won't be able to select that dummy item in the page:

@Html.DropDownList("yourName", yourSelectList, new { @class = "form-control select-add-placeholder" })

Then somewhere after:

$(".select-add-placeholder").prepend("<option value='' disabled selected>Select an option...</option>");

Which looks like:

You could try this:

@Html.DropDownList("country", new SelectList(ViewBag.countries), "-select- ", new { @class="chzn-select", @style="width:160px;" })

@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.SelectedProductIDs, 
Model.AvaliableProducts.ToSelectList("ID","Name"),
                       new { @class = "chzn-select", 
                            data_placeholder="Please select a product" })...

Please see in more details : http://code.stylenet.ca/mvc3-data-placeholder-html5-attribute/

In your collection ViewBag.Countries just insert a dummy record at the from of the collection with the name "-select-". You should be able to force the selected item with an alternate constructor like this:

@Html.DropDownList("country",
     new SelectList(ViewBag.countries as System.Collections.IEnumerable,
     "name", "name", "-select-"), new { @class="chzn-select", @style="width:160px;" } )