Chapter 12. Lists and Generated Content

In the realm of CSS layout, lists are an interesting case. The items in a list are simply letters) that are calculated and mostly formatted by the user agent, not the author. Taking a cue from the document structure, the user agent generates the numbers and their basic presentation.

None of this content-generation could be described in CSS1 terms—and, therefore, it couldn't be controlled—but any element, not just ordered list items. Furthermore, this basic mechanism makes it possible to insert other kinds of content, including text strings, attribute values, or even external resources into a document. Thus, it becomes possible to use CSS to insert link icons, editorial symbols, and more into a design without having to create extra markup.

To see how all these list options fit together, we'll explore basic list styling before moving on to examine the generation of content and counters.