CSS List Tutorial

The CSS list allows you to control the styling of list elements in an HTML document. The list-style-property is used to present different types of lists through a variety of marker styles for bulleted lists and numbered lists.

The list-style-image property is used to provide a custom marker for each list item. The list-style-position property is used to control the positioning of list item markers.

The CSS List properties give you complete control over the way you present and style list items.

CSS List properties allow you to:

Set different list item markers for numbered or ordered lists
Set different list item markers for bulleted or unordered lists
Set an image as the list item marker

List (list-style-property)

You use the list-style-property to change the presentation of bulleted and numbered lists. In HTML, there are two types of lists:

• unordered or bulleted lists - the list items are marked with bullets
• ordered or numbered lists - the list items are marked with numbers or letters

With CSS, lists can be styled further, and images can be used as the list item marker. For example, you can change an ordered list to a list using Roman numerals for markers, or you can change a bulleted list to one using squares instead of circles for markers.

For bulleted lists, the default value is disc style markers.
For numbered lists, the default

Styling Bulleted or Unordered Lists

The type of list item marker that appears before the list item is specified with the list-style-type property. It can be applied to either the <ul> or <li> elements

Example

Some of the property values for unordered lists are shown in the table below:

Values for Bulleted or Unordered Lists

Value	Description
none	No marker
disc	Default. The marker is a filled circle
circle	The marker is a circle
square	The marker is a square

Styling Numbered or Ordered Lists

Ordered lists can be styled using a variety of different lettering and numbering conventions.

Example

Some of the property values for ordered lists are shown in the table below:

Values for Numbered or Ordered Lists

Value	Description
armenian	The marker is traditional Armenian numbering
decimal	The marker is a number
decimal-leading-zero	The marker is a number padded by initial zeros
georgian	The marker is traditional Georgian numbering (an, ban, gan, etc.)
lower-alpha	The marker is lower-alpha (a, b, c, d, e, etc.)
lower-greek	The marker is lower-greek (alpha, beta, gamma, etc.)
lower-latin	The marker is lower-latin (a, b, c, d, e, etc.)
lower-roman	The marker is lower-roman (i, ii, iii, iv, v, etc.)
upper-alpha	The marker is upper-alpha (A, B, C, D, E, etc.)
upper-latin	The marker is upper-latin (A, B, C, D, E, etc.)
upper-roman	The marker is upper-roman (I, II, III, IV, V, etc.)

An Image as The List Item Marker

Like the list-style-type property, you can use the list-style-image property to change the marker used for list items. The list-style-image property is most suited for custom bulleted lists like the red spheres used on this website.

The list-style-image property is very straightforward; it accepts a file path to the image location, which is denoted by the url notation.

 

Example

The example above does not display equally well in all browsers. IE and Opera will display the image-marker a little bit higher than Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.

If you want the image-marker to be placed equally in all browsers, a crossbrowser solution is explained below.

The list-style-position Property

You can use the list-item-position property to control the placement of list item markers and whether the list item marker appears on the inside of the list item element or outside of it. Where the list marker is placed is only obvious when the <li> element has a border.

The values for the list-style-position are:

• inside
• outside

The default value is outside.

Example

 

Crossbrowser Solution

The following example displays the image-marker equally in all browsers:

Example

Example explained:

• For ul:
  • Set the list-style to none to remove the list marker
  • Set both padding and margin to 0px (for cross-browser compatibility)
• For li
  • Set the URL of the image, and show it only once (no-repeat)
  • Position the image where you want it (left 0px and down 5px)
  • Position the text in the list with padding-left

List - Shorthand Property

The list-style shorthand property allows multiple properties to be combined into one property. It enables you to specify from one to three values, with each value corresponding to the list style properties discussed above, list-style-type, list-style-image, and list-style-position.

The shorthand property used for lists, is the list-style property:

Example

When using the shorthand property, the order of the values are:

• list-style-type
• list-style-position (for a description, see the CSS properties table below)
• list-style-image

It does not matter if one of the values above are missing, as long as the rest are in the specified order.

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