Select Option ERROR

Take a look at this code, whats wrong with this? i just wanna call that list of select menu from a table, that code does but only displays the last row
i wanna display all the rows from that table.........

<?
include 'connect.php';
$result = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM ev_category order by cat_id desc'); 
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { 
$a=$row[0];
$b=$row[1];
}
?>

Select Category
<?
echo "<select name=\"category\">
<option value=\"$a\" selected=\"selected\">$b</option>
</select>";
?>

Code (markup):

 

You will need to loop through the results. The selected="selected" isn't going to work the way you want it to here. You will need to use an if statement to get the correct value to be selected.

<?php
include 'connect.php';
?>

Select Category
<select name="category">

<?php
$result = mysql_query('SELECT * FROM ev_category order by cat_id desc');

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) { 
echo '<option value="'.$row[0].'" selected="selected">'.$row[1].'</option>';
}
?>

</select>

PHP:

 

yeah thanks for that and if you dont mind can you please give me the suggestions how can i get to that for "selected" using if statement... that will be great ....

 

I'm not sure what criteria you are using to pre-select something but something like this:

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) 
{
if($row[0] == $some_criteria)
{
echo '<option value="'.$row[0].'" selected="selected">'.$row[1].'</option>';
} else {
echo '<option value="'.$row[0].'">'.$row[1].'</option>';
}
}

PHP:

 

Thanks Jestep for your kind support.....