Lists

There are three types of list; unordered lists, ordered lists and definition lists. We will look at the first two here.

Unordered lists and ordered lists work the same way, except that the former is used for non-sequential lists with list items usually preceded by bullets and the latter is for sequential lists, which are normally represented by incremental numbers.

The ul tag is used to define unordered lists and the ol tag is used to define ordered lists. Inside the lists, the li tag is used to define each list item.

Change your code to the following:


<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html>

<head>
	<title>My first web page</title>
</head>

<body>
	<h1>My first web page</h1>

	<h2>What this is</h2>
	<p>A simple page put together using HTML</p>

	<h2>Why this is</h2>
	<ul>
		<li>To learn HTML</li>
		<li>To show off</li>
		<li>Because I've fallen in love with my computer and want to give her some HTML loving.</li>
	</ul>

</body>

</html>

If you look at this in your browser, you will see a bulleted list. Simply change the ul tags to ol and you will see that the list will become numbered.

Lists can also be included in lists to form a structured hierarchy of items.

Replace the above list code with the following:


<ul>
	<li>To learn HTML</li>
	<li>
		To show off
		<ol>
			<li>To my boss</li>
			<li>To my friends</li>
			<li>To my cat</li>
			<li>To the little talking duck in my brain</li>
		</ol>
	</li>
	<li>Because I've fallen in love with my computer and want to give her some HTML loving.</li>
</ul>

A list within a list. And you could put another list within that. And another within that. And so on and so forth.

Related Pages

Next: Links - How to link things together.
Previous: Headings - The six levels of headings.