Forget the footer for now.

Have you got dropdownlists in your item template that you are changing ?
Have you got textboxes in your item template that you are changing ?

Have you got these filled with your data ?

You say you have a save button ... does it work for the items mentioned above ?

Now to the footer, a dropdownlist in the footer, what does it do ?

If you have all the stuff working in your items, then what does the footer
dropdownlist actually do ?
If you do not have changeable data in your items, then what could footer
dropdownlist possibly achieve ?

If you do not have all the stuff in your items being saved then this would seem
a logical first step BEFORE moving onto the footer.
If you have past this stage then please post code or at least an incling of how
you went about it.