Comments on: Ordered lists and the START attribute

By: David Hucklesby

David Hucklesby — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 02:20:24 +0000

Interesting dilemma. Speaking personally, I make good use of both spell-checker and validator during development. A strict DOCTYPE makes most sense to me. But just as I’d note, but not correct some spelling “errors,” the same goes for HTML “deprecated” items where the alternatives are poor, such as this case.

In other words, checking against a strict DOCTYPE is invaluable; avoiding flagged items like a plague seems less useful…

By: Charles

Charles — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:45:00 +0000

I should really thank you for the post because it has been presented in an impressive manner, its been very useful to me and i am really looking forward for more of this sort, thank you.

By: Russ

Russ — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 23:00:22 +0000

An interesting idea…

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:20:56 +0000

@Russ I just realised I forgot to escape my HTML syntax in the example I was trying to give – it was this:

Hopefully that works

By: Russ

Russ — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:16:57 +0000

@Brain, an interesting question. I suppose some people would argue that there are times – maybe if the numbering is more presentational… but I would find it hard to justify using a technique that disappears if CSS is turned off

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:06:48 +0000

@Russ I guess my view is that if you *have* to number ordered list items continuously throughout a document then that goes beyond the semantics that HTML can express – especially with the “start” attribute, which is prone to author error. Maybe a better way would be something like the “for” attribute for LABELs that would link two discrete OLs together so that the browser can treat them as a single list – e.g … .

HTML5′s undeprecation of the “start” and “type” attributes seems to me to be another example of the “paving the cowpaths” and fits with my overall feeling about the spec that it’s “two steps forward, one step back”.

As an aside – is there actually a valid use case for CSS Counters, given that they don’t degrade gracefully?

By: Jermayn

Jermayn — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:04:58 +0000

Always always wanted to know how to do this, so thank you…

By: Stephen Bunt

Stephen Bunt — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:38:04 +0000

I agree, Russ. This used to frustrate & infuriate me (do I need to get a life?), because of the “â€¦documents must be able to work with and without presentation” requirement. It just didn’t make sense that the document would have different ‘content’ without styling. CSS counters just don’t have the same _meaning_.

I often had to mark up terms & conditions for many of the promotional events at KCA. These are legal documents and are very much numbered points rather than paragraphs.

Because I had control over the code, I (grudgingly) used option 2, but I agree that option 5 is probably the best going forward.