Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

CSS for Lists

Bulleted and numbered lists have been around since the very beginning of HTML.^[*] Extensions to the ul and ol elements gave designers the ability to choose a bullet shape or numbering format, but beyond that, authors have had little control over list presentation. CSS 2.1 offers some improvements, most notably the ability to replace bullets with your own images.

Tip

In modern standards- and accessibility-driven web design, lists are being used in interesting ways to create navigation that previously would have been created with graphics and JavaScript (see Chapter 24).

^[*] One of the earliest documentations of the HTML language (dated 1992) defines the ul tag and describes ordered lists. To learn about HTML’s humble beginnings, visit http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/Tags.html.