Adding options to select with javascript

You could achieve this with a simple for loop:

var min = 12,
    max = 100,
    select = document.getElementById('selectElementId');

for (var i = min; i<=max; i++){
    var opt = document.createElement('option');
    opt.value = i;
    opt.innerHTML = i;
    select.appendChild(opt);
}

JS Fiddle demo.

JS Perf comparison of both mine and Sime Vidas' answer, run because I thought his looked a little more understandable/intuitive than mine and I wondered how that would translate into implementation. According to Chromium 14/Ubuntu 11.04 mine is somewhat faster, other browsers/platforms are likely to have differing results though.

Edited in response to comment from OP:

[How] do [I] apply this to more than one element?

function populateSelect(target, min, max){
    if (!target){
        return false;
    }
    else {
        var min = min || 0,
            max = max || min + 100;

        select = document.getElementById(target);

        for (var i = min; i<=max; i++){
            var opt = document.createElement('option');
            opt.value = i;
            opt.innerHTML = i;
            select.appendChild(opt);
        }
    }
}
// calling the function with all three values:
populateSelect('selectElementId',12,100);

// calling the function with only the 'id' ('min' and 'max' are set to defaults):
populateSelect('anotherSelect');

// calling the function with the 'id' and the 'min' (the 'max' is set to default):
populateSelect('moreSelects', 50);

JS Fiddle demo.

And, finally (after quite a delay...), an approach extending the prototype of the HTMLSelectElement in order to chain the populate() function, as a method, to the DOM node:

HTMLSelectElement.prototype.populate = function (opts) {
    var settings = {};

    settings.min = 0;
    settings.max = settings.min + 100;

    for (var userOpt in opts) {
        if (opts.hasOwnProperty(userOpt)) {
            settings[userOpt] = opts[userOpt];
        }
    }

    for (var i = settings.min; i <= settings.max; i++) {
        this.appendChild(new Option(i, i));
    }
};

document.getElementById('selectElementId').populate({
    'min': 12,
    'max': 40
});

JS Fiddle demo.

References:

• node.appendChild().
• document.getElementById().
• element.innerHTML.

Here you go:

for ( i = 12; i <= 100; i += 1 ) {
    option = document.createElement( 'option' );
    option.value = option.text = i;
    select.add( option );
}

Live demo: http://jsfiddle.net/mwPb5/

Update: Since you want to reuse this code, here's the function for it:

function initDropdownList( id, min, max ) {
    var select, i, option;

    select = document.getElementById( id );
    for ( i = min; i <= max; i += 1 ) {
        option = document.createElement( 'option' );
        option.value = option.text = i;
        select.add( option );
    }
}

Usage:

initDropdownList( 'mainSelect', 12, 100 );

Live demo: http://jsfiddle.net/mwPb5/1/

I don't recommend doing DOM manipulations inside a loop -- that can get expensive in large datasets. Instead, I would do something like this:

var elMainSelect = document.getElementById('mainSelect');

function selectOptionsCreate() {
  var frag = document.createDocumentFragment(),
    elOption;
  for (var i=12; i<101; ++i) {
    elOption = frag.appendChild(document.createElement('option'));
    elOption.text = i;
  }
  elMainSelect.appendChild(frag);
}

You can read more about DocumentFragment on MDN, but here's the gist of it:

It is used as a light-weight version of Document to store a segment of a document structure comprised of nodes just like a standard document. The key difference is that because the document fragment isn't part of the actual DOM's structure, changes made to the fragment don't affect the document, cause reflow, or incur any performance impact that can occur when changes are made.

The most concise and intuitive way would be:

var selectElement = document.getElementById('ageselect');

for (var age = 12; age <= 100; age++) {
  selectElement.add(new Option(age));
}

Your age: <select id="ageselect"><option value="">Please select</option></select>

You can also differentiate the name and the value or add items at the start of the list with additional parameters to the used functions:
HTMLSelect​Element​.add(item[, before]);
new Option(text, value, defaultSelected, selected);