HTML:lists

[Jamie McCarthy]

William J. Frost wrote:

> I remember reading somewhere of a way (Netscape extension?) to substitute
> an image for the disc, circle, or square preceding items <LI>listed</LI>
> in an <UL>unordered</UL> list, but I found nothing in both paper and
> online HTML guides.
> 
> Did I dream this?

You can write HTML 3.2 standard code to specify the disc, square,
or circle built-in shapes:

   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32.html#ul

But even that is deprecated in HTML 4.0:

   http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/lists.html#h-10.3.1

And I don't see anything about it being a Netscape extension:

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

If you really need the image, it's easy to do it as a table:

   <blockquote>
   <table border=0 cellpadding=2>
   <tr valign="top">
      <td width=20><img src="/dot.gif" width=15 height=15></td>
         <td>My text here</td>
   </tr>
   </table>
   </blockquote>

There may be a way to fudge it into <ol> or <ul> lists, but I can't
find anything about it after ten minutes of looking, which suggests
it's so nonstandard you wouldn't want to use it.  Go with a table;
either the "cellpadding" or "cellspacing" attribute, as you prefer,
will make it easy to make it look nice.
-- 
 Jamie McCarthy                 jamie at mccarthy.org