Question

This question already has answers here:

Can I use a div inside a list item? (6 answers)

Closed 8 years ago.

I know that DIV inside LI isn t allowed, but I ve seen it lately on many "big" websites like Smashing Magazine, Web Designer Wall... etc.

I tried to validate sites, and they have errors, but nothing about DIV in LI?!

So can I use it inside LI, and I need it to be valid?

Answer 1

Yes it is valid according to xhtml1-strict.dtd. The following XHTML passes the validation:

<?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 xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
    <title>Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<ul>
  <li><div>test</div></li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>

Answer 2

As an addendum: Before HTML 5 while a div inside a li is valid, a div inside a dl, dd, or dt is not!

Answer 3

If you look at xhtml1-strict.dtd, you ll see

<!ELEMENT li %Flow;>
<!ENTITY % Flow "(#PCDATA | %block; | form | %inline; | %misc;)*">
<!ENTITY % block
     "p | %heading; | div | %lists; | %blocktext; | fieldset | table">

Thus div, p etc. can be inside li (according to XHTML 1.0 Strict DTD from w3.org).

Answer 4

If I recall correctly, a div inside a li used to be invalid.

@Flower @Superstringcheese Div should semantically define a section of a document, but it has already practically lost this role. Span should however contain text.

Answer 5

I see you would want to do this if you wanted to make, say, the whole box of a menu item clickable. I used to insert an <li> tag in <a> tags to do this but this seems more valid.

友情链接