SimpleQuiz › A List › Conclusion

This was another easy one — but as expected the discussion got more interesting as additional related questions were asked. The question itself is becoming secondary to the conversation happening alongside.

Notable Comments

Overwhelmingly, it was D all the way. I guess I sort of gave it away, orginally titling it “Part II: Unordered Lists”. We’ve learned some good stuff here though.

web:

Yeah, I’d go with D as well, but to be noted is the lack of KitKats in your list.

Dully noted.

Michael Z.:

There are a few situations where code like A could be used, though. Marking up a poem, for example.

Which prompted others to ask about using pre or br / to markup a poem. Tough to call,
and even the W3C uses a poem as an example of both methods.

Folkert:

Did anyone ever fall into the trap of identifying every bit of content on a page as a list, ordered and unordered? I was that close to declaring the bodytext on a page as an inline ordered list.

In fact, Doug Bowman pointed me to Tantek Çelik’s move to using a series of lists
to handle most of his weblog’s structure.

Also certainly worth a look again, is Doug’s Overused Lists? article — where he explores the differences between using pipe-delimited vs. an unordered list for navigation. The pipe-delimited method could’ve easily been option E in this quiz question, and may have divided the results a bit.

Michael Z.

I think even one item can constitute a list.

And according to the W3C, this is true.

Paul G.:

You’d have to change the stylesheet and the markup if you wanted to do something as simple as add a border around your list.

Exactly. Using a ul makes it easier to change styles with CSS.

Matt Haughey poses some questions that are far more intriguing than the quiz itself:

When should someone put something in a list instead of using line breaks? How to do screenreaders interpret lists?

To which Patrick H. Lauke responds with perhaps the most insightful information of the discussion:

… yes, they do treat lists differently from normal text broken up by line breaks. JAWS, for instance, announces that it’s an “unordered list with 5 items”. I imagine other screenreaders will provide similar information.

That to me, is a huge reason for using lists when in doubt. And after being asked whether the declaration of how many list items there are would be a hinderance to blind users, Patrick went on to offer this:

… they will know how many links there are (i.e. whether it’s only 5 items or 50), which will influence how they will choose to navigate the site.

I realize I could go on quoting everything else — because there are other great points raised as a result of another seemingly ELEMENTary (sorry) question.

Summary

A simple list of items should most likely be structured with a ul element. Why is the better way?

• D is more easily styled with CSS without having to modify the markup.
• Using a ul to markup lists makes it easier for screenreader users to hear how many items are contained.
• An unordered list may be better represented in a small screen such as a phone or PDA — where unintentional line-wrapping may occurr.