title: Efficiently get selected option in a drop-down list (XHTML Select element)
body: <p><strong>Background</strong></p>
  
  <p>There's a large list of options - dozens - in a drop-down list using an XHTML Select element. </p>
  
  <p>Using JavaScript, I need to retrieve the selected option.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Problem</strong></p>
  
  <p>Currently I'm using jQuery <code>:selected</code> CSS selector and it works as expected, but this approach isn't efficient as it takes a while to find selected option - obviously, it depends on CPU power of client machine, but in a decent Intel Core 2 with 4GB of RAM, there's an excesive performance penalty.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Issue</strong></p>
  
  <p>Either using jQuery or plain JavaScript and DOM, I need to get selected option of this XHTML Select element in an efficient way.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you in advance.</p>