According to mozilla doc:
"If the control is presented as a scrolled list box, this attribute represents the number of rows in the list that should be visible at one time. Browsers are not required to present a select element as a scrolled list box. The default value is 0."
In chromium, the size of the select box is determined by checking the size of the first option and multiplying it by the 'size' attribute:
https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/src/third_party/WebKit/Source/core/layout/LayoutListBox.cpp?rcl=0&l=97
That fails when the first option is smaller than the rest:
http://jsbin.com/lutaxiyuqe/edit?html,output
Comment 1 by szager@chromium.org
, May 31 2016