How to style my unordered list like a table?

Question

I have ONLY one

and under that we have group of

•  
  
     
  1
  
     
  2
           
  
  
          

Answer 1

It's a really late answer, but I think this is a common topic. Here's a codepen I made.

Obviously it's just a starting point. It also has some example of how to add styles like bg or borders. If the 'cells' contain some arbitrary content, you'll have to adjust dimensions, for example. I use this kind of code for thumbnails galleries, for example, where you don't have to worry about borders or bgs and it's quite elementary code (the example is for a 2x3 table, see codepen):

ul{
  list-style:none;
}

ul li{
  float:left;
  padding:10px;
  border-bottom:1px solid #000;
  border-right:1px solid #000;
}

ul li:nth-child(3n){
  background-color:#888;
}

ul li:nth-child(3n+1){
  clear:both;
  border-left:1px solid #000;
  background-color:#ccc;
}

ul li:nth-child(-n+3){
  border-top:1px solid #000;
}

Hope it helps.

Answer 2

You cannot convert a single list (containing more than 2 items) into 2 columns via the display: table properties because you need some element to act as the table-row. Without an element acting as a table-row, all adjacent elements that are set to display: table-cell will be contained within an anonymous table-row element that cannot be modified or styled in any way.

Your only option is to either change the markup (to use tables or lists of lists) or use a different approach to your CSS: either floats/inline-block on the lis or using the columns property on the ul.

Answer 3

Well, here's one possible solution:

ul {
    width: 450px;           /* change it to whatever you like */
    position: relative;

    /* these should be probably already set up by `reset.css` */ 
    list-style-type: none;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
}

ul:before, ul:after {
    text-align: center;
    display: block;
    border: 1px solid black;
    border-bottom: 0;
    width: 48%;
}

ul:before {
    content: 'col1';
    border-right: 0;    
}

ul:after {
    content: 'col2';
    position: absolute;
    top: 0;
    left: 48%;
    margin-left: 1px;    
}

li {
    text-align: right;
    width: 48%;
    float: left;
    border: 1px solid black;
    margin-bottom: -1px;
}

li:nth-child(even) {
    margin-left: -1px;
}

It works (JSFiddle; tested in Chrome, Firefox and Opera; nth-child(even) selector obviously fails in IE8, so you have to emulate it with class or other means; but otherwise it's still solid), but I admit I feel guilty about this. )

P.S. If you want to add padding to the "cell" contents, don't forget to change their widths as well, like here:

li {
    width: 47%;
    padding-right: 1%;
}