I used to be studying “Creative List Styling” on Google’s internet.dev weblog and observed one thing odd in one of many code examples within the ::marker
part of the article. The built-in listing markers are bullets, ordinal numbers, and letters. The ::marker
pseudo-element permits us to model these markers or substitute them with a customized character or picture.
::marker {
content material: url('/marker.svg') ' ';
}
The instance that caught my consideration makes use of an SVG icon as a customized marker for the listing objects. However there’s additionally a single house character (" "
) within the CSS worth subsequent to the url()
operate. The aim of this house appears to be to insert a niche after the customized marker.
After I noticed this code, I instantly questioned if there was a greater strategy to create the hole. Appending an area to content material
feels extra like a workaround than the optimum resolution. CSS supplies margin
and padding
and different customary methods to house out components on the web page. May none of those properties be used on this scenario?
First, I attempted to substitute the house character with a correct margin:
::marker {
content material: url('/marker.svg');
margin-right: 1ch;
}
This didn’t work. Because it seems, ::marker
solely helps a small set of mostly text-related CSS properties. For instance, you may change the font-size
and shade
of the marker, and outline a customized marker by setting content material
to a string or URL, as proven above. However the margin
and padding
properties are not supported, so setting them has no impact. What a disappointment.
May it actually be {that a} house character is the one strategy to insert a niche after a customized marker? I wanted to search out out. As I researched this matter, I made just a few fascinating discoveries that I’d prefer to share on this article.
Including padding and margins
First, let’s verify what margin
and padding
do on the <ul>
and <li>
components. I’ve created a take a look at web page for this function. Drag the related sliders and observe the impact on the spacing on both sides of the listing marker. Tip: Use the Reset button liberally to reset all controls to their preliminary values.
Notice: Browsers apply a default padding-inline-left
of 40px
to <ol>
and <ul>
components. The logical padding-inline-left
property is equal to the bodily padding-left
property in writing methods with a left-to-right inline course. On this article, I’m going to make use of bodily properties for the sake of simplicity.
As you may see, padding-left
on <li>
will increase the hole after the listing marker. The opposite three properties management the spacing to the left of the marker, in different phrases, the indentation of the listing merchandise.
Discover that even when the listing merchandise’s padding-left
is 0px
, there may be nonetheless a minimal hole after the marker. This hole can’t be decreased with margin
or padding
. The precise size of the minimal hole will depend on the browser.
To sum up, the listing merchandise’s content material is positioned at a browser-specific minimal distance from the marker, and this hole could be additional elevated by including a padding-left
to <li>
.
Subsequent, let’s see what occurs after we place the marker inside the listing merchandise.
Transferring the marker contained in the listing merchandise
The list-style-position
property accepts two key phrases: exterior
, which is the default, and inside
, which strikes the marker contained in the listing merchandise. The latter is helpful for creating designs with full-width listing objects.
If the marker is now inside the listing merchandise, does this imply that padding-left
on <li>
not will increase the hole after the marker? Let’s discover out. On my take a look at web page, activate list-style-position: inside
through the checkbox. How are the 4 padding
and margin
properties affected by this transformation?
As you may see, padding-left
on <li>
now will increase the spacing to the left of the marker. Which means that we’ve misplaced the flexibility to extend the hole after the marker. On this scenario, it could be helpful to have the ability to add margin-right
to the ::marker
itself, however that doesn’t work, as we’ve established above.
Moreover, there’s a bug in Chromium that causes the hole after the marker to triple after switching to inside
positioning. By default, the size of the hole is about one-third of the textual content measurement. So at a default font-size
of 16px
, the hole is about 5.5px
. After switching to inside
, the hole grows to the complete 16px
in Chrome. This bug impacts the disc
, circle
, and sq.
markers, however not ordinal number markers.
The next picture reveals the default rendering of outdoor and inside-positioned listing markers throughout three main browsers on macOS. On your comfort, I’ve horizontally aligned all listing objects on their markers to make it simpler to check the variations in hole sizes.
To sum up, switching to list-style-position: inside
introduces two issues. We are able to not enhance the hole through padding-left
on <li>
, and the hole measurement is inconsistent between browsers.
Lastly, let’s see what occurs after we substitute the default listing marker with a customized marker.
Switching to a customized marker
There are two methods to outline a customized marker:
list-style-type
andlist-style-image
propertiescontent material
property on the::marker
pseudo-element
The content material
property is extra highly effective. For instance, it permits us to make use of the counter()
operate to entry the listing merchandise’s ordinal quantity (the implicit list-item
counter) and beautify it with customized strings.
Sadly, Safari doesn’t assist the content material
property on ::marker
but (WebKit bug). For that reason, I’m going to make use of the list-style-type
property to outline the customized marker. You possibly can nonetheless use the ::marker
selector to model the customized marker declared through list-style-type
. That side of ::marker
is supported in Safari.
Any Unicode character can probably function a customized listing marker, however solely a small set of characters even have “Bullet” of their official title, so I assumed I’d compile them right here for reference.
Character | Identify | Code level | CSS key phrase |
---|---|---|---|
• | Bullet | U+2022 |
disc |
‣ | Triangular Bullet | U+2023 |
|
⁃ | Hyphen Bullet | U+2043 |
|
⁌ | Black Leftwards Bullet | U+204C |
|
⁍ | Black Rightwards Bullet | U+204D |
|
◘ | Inverse Bullet | U+25D8 |
|
◦ | White Bullet | U+25E6 |
circle |
☙ | Reversed Rotated Floral Coronary heart Bullet | U+2619 |
|
❥ | Rotated Heavy Black Coronary heart Bullet | U+2765 |
|
❧ | Rotated Floral Coronary heart Bullet | U+2767 |
|
⦾ | Circled White Bullet | U+29BE |
|
⦿ | Circled Bullet | U+29BF |
Notice: The CSS sq.
key phrase doesn’t have a corresponding “Bullet” character in Unicode. The character that comes closest is the Black Small Sq. (▪️) emoji (U+25AA
).
Now let’s see what occurs after we substitute the default listing marker with list-style-type: "•"
(U+2022
Bullet). This is similar character because the default bullet, so there shouldn’t be any main rendering variations. On my take a look at web page, activate the list-style-type
possibility and observe any modifications to the marker.
As you may see, there are two vital modifications:
- There isn’t a longer a minimal hole after the marker.
- The bullet has turn out to be smaller, as if it have been rendered at a smaller
font-size
.
In response to CSS Counter Styles Level 3, the default listing marker (disc
) ought to be “much like • U+2022
BULLET”. Evidently browsers enhance the scale of the default bullet to make it extra legible. Firefox even makes use of a particular font, -moz-bullet-font
, for the marker.
Can the small measurement drawback be fastened with CSS? On my take a look at web page, activate marker styling and observe what occurs once you change the font-size
, line-height
, and font-family
of the marker.
As you may see, growing the font-size
causes the customized marker to turn out to be vertically misaligned, and this can’t be corrected by reducing the line-height
. The vertical-align
property, which might simply repair this drawback, shouldn’t be supported on ::marker
.
However did you discover that altering the font-family
could cause the marker to turn out to be greater? Attempt setting it to Tahoma
. This might probably be a good-enough workaround for the small-size drawback, though I haven’t examined which font works greatest throughout the most important browsers and working methods.
You might also have observed that the Chromium bug doesn’t happen anymore once you place the marker contained in the listing merchandise. Which means that a customized marker can function a workaround for this bug. And this leads me to the principle drawback, and the rationale why I began researching this matter. In case you outline a customized marker and place it contained in the listing merchandise, there isn’t any hole after the marker and no strategy to insert a niche by customary means.
- There isn’t a minimal hole after customized markers.
::marker
doesn’t assistpadding
ormargin
.padding-left
on<li>
doesn’t enhance the hole, because the marker is positionedinside
.
Abstract
Right here’s a abstract of all the important thing details that I’ve talked about within the article:
- Browsers apply a default
padding-inline-start
of40px
to<ul>
and<ol>
components. - There’s a minimal hole after built-in listing markers (
disc
,decimal
, and so forth.). There isn’t a minimal hole after customized markers (string or URL). - The size of the hole could be elevated by including a
padding-left
to<ul>
, however provided that the marker is positioned exterior the listing merchandise (the default mode). - Customized string markers have a smaller default measurement than built-in markers. Altering the
font-family
on::marker
can enhance their measurement.
Conclusion
Wanting again on the code instance from the start of the article, I feel I perceive now why there’s an area character within the content material
worth. There’s simply no higher strategy to insert a niche after the SVG marker. It’s a workaround that’s wanted as a result of no quantity of margin
and padding
can create a niche after a customized marker that’s positioned contained in the listing merchandise. A margin-right
on ::marker
might simply do it, however that isn’t supported.
Till ::marker
provides assist for extra properties, internet builders will typically haven’t any alternative however to cover the marker and emulate it with a ::earlier than
pseudo-element. I had to do this myself just lately as a result of I couldn’t change the marker’s background-color
. Hopefully, we received’t have to attend too lengthy for a extra highly effective ::marker
pseudo-element.