About Lists in HTML...
= Index DOT Html by Brian Wilson [bloo@blooberry.com] =

Justification for Lists

The list styles available in HTML provide a way to organize groups of information into visually and logically distinct structures. Each list style type provides its own method of data organization and should be rendered differently from the other styles (though this is often not the case.) All of the HTML list structures were introduced in HTML 2 when there was no alternative cataloging methods for content (such as tables.)

Physical Vs. Virtual List Styles

Physical List Styles

[<dl>, <ol>, <ul>]

These styles each have common display properties that will generally stay the same from one browser to another.

DL: This list type represents a list of terms and corresponding definitions.

OL: These are lists where the items need to be sorted by sequence or order of importance. The values in the list marking scheme increment with each successive list item using an alpha-numeric sequence (usually 1,2,3,...)

UL: This list type specifies standard symbols to use as non-ordered list markers. For each successive list item, the symbol will remain the same.

Virtual List Styles

[<dir>, <menu>]

These list styles are more vague in their requirements for content and display.

MENU: This style is used for a list of items typically having one line per item.

DIR: This style is used to represent a list of short items.

List Items

[<li>, <dt>, <dd>]

The List styles mentioned above detail the TYPE of information contained, but the List Item markers delineate the separate items within these list structures.

Official References

ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1866.txt

RFC 1866: The HTML 2.0 specification (plain text)

http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/html-spec

The web version of the HTML 2.0 (RFC 1866) specification

http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/Wilbur/

The HTML 3.2 (Wilbur) proposal
[Includes all HTML 2 list elements and newer extensions to these tags]

http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/Cougar/HTML.dtd

The experimental HTML (Cougar) draft
[Demonstrates some of the directions HTML is taking]

http://home.netscape.com/assist/net_sites/html_extensions.html

Netscape Extensions to HTML 2.0
[Details extensions to ordered and unordered list structures]

http://www.microsoft.com/workshop/author/newhtml/htmlr020.htm

Internet Explorer 3.0 Tag reference
[Details list usage as well as 2.0, 3.2 and common extensions]