OL (Ordered List)

An ordered list typically is a numbered list of items. HTML 3.0 gives you the ability to control the sequence number - to continue where the previous list left off, or to start at a particular number. The numbering style is left to associated style sheets, e.g. whether nested lists contribute to a compound item number, e.g. "3.1.5", or whether numbers are rendered as arabic, upper or lower case roman numerals or using the numbering scheme appropriate to the language context.

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

    <OL>
      <LH>Meeting Agenda</LH>
      <LI>Minutes of the last meeting
      <LI>Do we need yet more meetings?
      <LI>Any other business
    </OL>

which could be rendered as:

Meening Agenda

• Minutes of the last meeting
• Do we need yet more meetings?
• Any other business

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.

Permitted Attributes for the OL 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.

CONTINUE

Don't restart the sequence number, i.e. continue where previous list left off, e.g. <OL CONTINUE>

SEQNUM

Set the starting sequence number for the first item, e.g. <OL SEQNUM=23>

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.