HTML, XHTML, and CSS Bible, Fourth Edition

Chapter 31. CSS Lists

IN THIS CHAPTER

• An overview of lists

• CSS lists — any element will do

• List style type

• Positioning of markers

• Using images as list markers

Lists are one of the most versatile textual constructs in HTML. Many HTML authors rely on them to render text in a variety of ways — not just text in list form. Several CSS properties modify lists. You can change the list type or the position of the elements, and specify images to use instead of bullets. This chapter covers the CSS list-related properties.

An Overview of Lists

There are two types of lists in standard HTML, ordered and unordered. Ordered lists have each of their elements numbered and are generally used for steps that must follow a specific order. Unordered lists are typically a list of related items that do not need to be in a particular order (commonly formatted as bulleted lists).

Note

HTML formatting of lists is covered in Chapter 7.

Ordered lists are enclosed in the ordered list tag, <ol>. Unordered lists are enclosed in the unordered list tag, <ul>. A list item tag (<li>) encapsulates each item in either list. The following code shows short examples of each type of list. Figure 31-1 shows the output of this code.

<ol>An ordered list
  <li>Step 1</li>
  <li>Step 2</li>
  <li>Step 3</li>
</ol>
<ul>An unordered list
  <li>Item 1</li>
  <li>Item 2</li>
  <li>Item 3</li>
</ul>

Figure 31-1. The two types of lists, ordered (numbered) and ...