[thelist] Using Definition Lists instead of Unordered Lists

Jono ox4dboy at comcast.net
Wed Jan 19 10:16:22 CST 2005


I am on the fence on whether to sue a <ul> or <dl> in a few situations.

For example:

Codification of PMA Expanding E-Government Initiatives
     * Codifies OMB’s role: E-Gov Administrator and Office of 
E-Government
     * Endorses and requires agencies to support initiatives (cross 
agency initiatives such as E-Rulemaking, Geospatial One-Stop, E-Records 
Management, E-Authentication(esp. E-signatures) and Disaster 
Management; FirstGov; enterprise architecture)
     * Authorizes E-Gov fund beyond President’s $100 M target

Would this be appropriate?:

<dl>
<dt>Codification of PMA Expanding E-Government Initiatives</dt>
<dd>Codifies OMB’s role: E-Gov Administrator and Office of 
E-Government</dd>
<dd> Endorses and requires agencies to support initiatives (cross 
agency initiatives such as E-Rulemaking, Geospatial One-Stop, E-Records 
Management, E-Authentication (esp. E-signatures) and Disaster 
Management; FirstGov; enterprise architecture)</dd>
<dd> Authorizes E-Gov fund beyond President’s $100 M target</dd>
</dl>


How about this similar list?:

New OMB Requirements
     * Annual report to Congress
     * Sponsor ongoing dialogue with state, local, and tribal 
governments, as well as the general public, the private, and the 
non-profit sectors to find innovative ways toimprove the performance of 
governments in collaborating on the use of information technology to 
improve the delivery of Government information and services
     * Standards for categorizing and indexing government information
     * Standards for agency web sites
     * Create a public directory for agency web sites
     * Select agencies to engage in pilot projects on data integration
     * Access improvement for people with and without computers

Would the example(s) above be best served by using <dl> instead of <ul> 
or another method I am not aware of?  I think it would be appropriate, 
but I want others opinions.  I have done some quick research, and found 
some info here:

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/def.html#dl

http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/definition/

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/lists.html

Still on the fence, can someone clear this up?


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