Custom List Number Styling

How about a classic CSS trick! This isn’t even so tricky anymore, since CSS has counter-increment and counter-reset and such that is perfect for this. I just wanted to make sure you knew how it works and had some easy-to-copy examples at the ready.

Let’s say all you wanna do is style the dang numbers:

See the Pen Custom List Style 2 by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen.

Oh and hey, if you’re worried about lining up the numbers, you could apply the counter with ::marker and let the magic of list-style do automatic alignment, or here’s an idea with subgrid.

Here’s an example from the CodePen Challenges pages:

See the Pen Custom List Counters by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen.

The keyframers made a Pen the other day that used pretty cool styles. Here’s a redux:

See the Pen Custom List Style 3 by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen.

Recipe sites are great places to look for custom list styles, as lists of steps are such a prevelant feature. On Mat Marquis’ site, he’s got some fun ones. I ripped off his CSS and moved it here:

See the Pen Wilto Counters by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen.

Make sure to check out the fun little media query change. Lea Verou’s food site, of course, has counter-based numbering as well.

Here’s an interesting demo from Jonathan Snook that has a “timeline” look and uses custom counters to label each section:

See the Pen Timeline CSS with Counters by Jonathan Snook (@snookca) on CodePen.

More Information

• Counting With CSS Counters and CSS Grid
• Numbering In Style
• Fun Times with CSS Counters
• Style List Markers in CSS
• counter-increment and counter-reset in the Almanac, and the theoretical ::marker
• Automatic Numbering With CSS Counters
• Ordered Lists with Unicode Symbols