Question

I’m using the following list:

<ol id='footnotes'>     <a name='footnote1'><li></a>This is the first footnote...</li>     <a name='footnote2'><li></a>This is the second footnote...</li> </ol> 

With the following .css:

#footnotes {list-style-type: decimal;             list-style-color: #f90;             }  #footnotes li            {color: #000;             }  #footnotes a li, #footnotes li a            {color: #f90;             } 

The aim is to have the li/footer text itself black (#000), and the number styled to orange (#f90).

I’ve tried using the list-style-color property but this does nothing except upset the Web developer toolbar (in FF3.0.8/Ubuntu 8.04), Midori similarly doesn’t display the number in orange (I thought I’d try it in the Webkit engine, just in case…).

Any ideas?

Edited the HTML (since I remembered that the tag doesn’t necessarily need to enclose anything to function as an anchor):

<ol id='footnotes'>     <li><a name='footnote1'></a>This is the first footnote...</li>     <li><a name='footnote2'></a>This is the second footnote...</li> </ol> 

In response to those that suggest using a <span> inside the <li>…yeah. That occurred, though I thank you for the suggestions and the time taken, but I was looking (li’l standardista that I am… 😉 ) for a more…semantic option.

As it is, I think I’ll probably use that approach. Though I accepted a different, Pete Michaud’s, answer due to its sheer informative nature. Thanks!

Answer 1

Well, the kicker is that the numbers are technically generated inside the <li>, so anything you do to the <li> will affect the number. From the spec:

‘Most block-level elements in CSS generate one principal block box. In this section, we discuss two CSS mechanisms that cause an element to generate two boxes: one principal block box (for the element’s content) and one separate marker box (for decoration such as a bullet, image, or number).’

Notice that both the marker box and the principal box belong to the same element – in this case, the list item. Accordingly, we should expect all <li> styling to apply to both the marker and the content. This is also not surprising if you think about it as though the list item itself is generating the numbering content (which effectively it is doing in CSS terms). This is confirmed later on when the spec continues:

‘The list properties allow basic visual formatting of lists. As with more general markers, a element with ‘display: list-item’ generates a principal box for the element’s content and an optional marker box. The other list properties allow authors to specify the marker type (image, glyph, or number) and its position with respect to the principal box (outside it or within it before content). They do not allow authors to specify distinct style (colors, fonts, alignment, etc.) for the list marker or adjust its position with respect to the principal box.’

So because the marker belongs to the list, it is affected by the <li> styling and isn’t adjustable directly. The only way to achieve a different styling for the marker is to insert a <span> inside the list item, and style the span with the properties you want to be different from the marker.