UL (Unordered List)

An unordered list typically is a bulleted list of items. HTML 3.0 gives you the ability to customise the bullets, to do without bullets and to wrap list items horizontally or vertically for multicolumn lists.

The opening list tag must be <UL>. It is followed by an optional list header (<LH>caption</LH>) and then by the first list item (<LI>). For example:

    <UL>
      <LH>Table Fruit</LH>
      <LI>apples
      <LI>oranges
      <LI>bananas
    </UL>

which could be rendered as:

Table Fruit

• apples
• oranges
• bananas

Note: Some legacy documents may include headers or plain text before the first LI element. Implementors of HTML 3.0 user agents are advised to cater for this possibility in order to handle badly formed legacy documents.

MENU and DIR elements

These elements are superceded by extensions to the UL element. User agents are advised to continue to support them for the sake of legacy documents. Both MENU and DIR consist of one or more LI elements, similar to UL. MENU lists are typically rendered without bullets in a more compact style than UL. You can get the same effect with <UL PLAIN>. DIR lists are used to present lists of items containing up to 20 characters each. Items in a DIR list are arranged in columns. You can get the same effect with <UL PLAIN WRAP=HORIZ>.

Permitted Attributes for the UL Element

ID

An SGML identifier used as the target for hypertext links or for naming particular elements in associated style sheets. Identifiers are NAME tokens and must be unique within the scope of the current document.

LANG

This is one of the ISO standard language abbreviations, e.g. "en.uk" for the variation of English spoken in the United Kingdom. It can be used by parsers to select language specific choices for quotation marks, ligatures and hypenation rules etc. The language attribute is composed from the two letter language code from ISO 639, optionally followed by a period and a two letter country code from ISO 3166.

CLASS

This a space separated list of SGML NAME tokens and is used to subclass tag names. By convention, the class names are interpreted hierarchically, with the most general class on the left and the most specific on the right, where classes are separated by a period. The CLASS attribute is most commonly used to attach a different style to some element, but it is recommended that where practical class names should be picked on the basis of the element's semantics, as this will permit other uses, such as restricting search through documents by matching on element class names. The conventions for choosing class names are outside the scope of this specification.

CLEAR

This attribute is common to all block-like elements. When text flows around a figure or table in the margin, you sometimes want to start an element like a header, paragraph or list below the figure rather than alongside it. The CLEAR attribute allows you to move down unconditionally:

clear=left

move down until left margin is clear

clear=right

move down until right margin is clear

clear=all

move down until both margins are clear

Alternatively, you can decide to place the element alongside the figure just so long as there is enough room. The minimum width needed is specified as:

clear="40 en"

move down until there is at least 40 en units free

clear="100 pixels"

move down until there is at least 100 pixels free

The style sheet (or browser defaults) may provide default minimum widths for each class of block-like elements.

PLAIN

The presence of this attribute suppresses the display of bullets, e.g. <UL PLAIN>.

SRC

Specifies an image for use as a bullet. The image is specified as a URI. This attribute may appear together with the MD attribute.

MD

Specifies a message digest or cryptographic checksum for the associated graphic specified by the SRC attribute. It is used when you want to be sure that a linked object is indeed the same one that the author intended, and hasn't been modified in any way. For instance, MD="md5:jV2OfH+nnXHU8bnkPAad/mSQlTDZ", which specifies an MD5 checksum encoded as a base64 character string. The MD attribute is generally allowed for all elements which support URI based links.

DINGBAT

Specifies an iconic image for use as a bullet. The icon is specified as an entity name. A list of standard icon entity names for HTML 3.0 is given in an appendix of this specification, e.g. folder is the entity name for an icon denoting a directory or folder.

WRAP

The WRAP attribute is used for multicolumn lists. Use wrap=vert if you want to arrange the list items down the page before wrapping to the next column. Use wrap=horiz if you want to arrange the items across the page (less useful). The user agent is responsible for determining how many columns are appropriate.

COMPACT

The presence of this attribute indicates the user agent should use reduced interitem spacing. In practice, there are several ways to increase the compactness of lists: reduced vertical interitem spacing, smaller font size, or even to avoid line breaks between items. This is best handled through associated style sheets and the class attribute.