Hi I have about six months experience in web development.
I have the following observation,
I use <div> tags a lot, it gives me the ability to position the elements, to archive the elements,
and it seems I can use <div> tags to do everything, simply playing with its display property.
I’ve never had to use <ul> or <li> elements in combination, except for horizontal menu navigation, and I am not sure why you can’t do it with <div> elements, but it seems to be the ‘convention’ for achieving a horizontal menu.
Did I miss something? Are there some properties that <li> elements have that are better or more useful than <div> elements?
Please don’t restrict this question to only horizontal menu list; I want to know any scenario where you would use a <li> over something else.
Yes, you can do anything (more or less) strictly with div tags (with exceptions, like forms and inputs, and images, and what not). But that’s not the point.
First, specific tags have default css applied to them. li’s have bullets, for example. You can change these, but in many situations, it’s just easier to use the tag that has the style you’re looking for.
But the most important reason is what’s called “semantic markup”, which is the concept that which element you use corresponds to a semantic meaning. li means it’s a list of items, so even if you have no CSS applied (such as when a screen reader reads a page aloud for blind person) then it still has meaning.