What Is an OL Tag/Element? - XHTML 1.0 Tutorials - Understanding Lists and List Items

An "ol" element is block level element that can be used to define an ordered list, where items are displayed with leading sequential numbers. Here are basic rules about "ol" elements:

• "ol" elements are block level elements.
• "ol" elements can not have text contents.
• An "ol" element must have one or more "li" elements as sub-elements.
• Each "li" element will be displayed by browsers as a paragraph with a leading number to represent the position of this "li" element in its parent "ol" element.

Below is a good tutorial example of "ol" elements:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
 <head>
  <title>Ordered Lists</title>
 </head>
 <body>
  <p>The most visited sites in 'Computers' category:</p>
  <ol>
  <li>Yahoo! - www.yahoo.com</li>
  <li>Google - www.google.com</li>
  <li>MSN - www.msn.com</li>
  </ol>
 </body>
</html>

If you save the above document as ordered_list.html, and view it with Internet Explorer, you will see a list of items with leading sequential numbers as shown below: