Use an ordered list when the sequence of the list items is important. A list of instructions is a good example, as are tables of content and lists of document footnotes or endnotes.
<li>Place in sealed jars and enjoy!
This is rendered by Netscape as shown in Figure 8.2.
<li> This is item number 5.
<li> This is number six!
By default, browsers number ordered list items with a sequence of Arabic numerals. Besides being able to start the sequence at some number other than 1, you can use the type attribute with the <ol> tag to change the numbering style itself. With the <ol> tag, the type attribute may have a value of "A" for numbering with capital letters, "a" for numbering with lowercase letters, "I" for capital Roman numerals, "i" for lowercase Roman numerals, or "1" for common Arabic numerals. (See Table 8.1).
The results are shown in Figure 8.3.
The type and value of individual items in a list can be different from the list as a whole, as described in 3.1.
Like the unordered list, the ordered list in HTML has an optional compact attribute. When instructed to compact the ordered list, the browser may reduce the indentation, reduce the amount of space between the sequence numbers and the list items, or both. Some browsers cannot compact and so do nothing.
The style attribute for the <ol> tag creates an inline style for the elements enclosed by the tag, overriding any other style rule in effect. The class attribute lets you format the content according to a predefined class of the <ol> tag; its value is the name of that class. [the section called "Inline Styles: The style Attribute"] [the section called "Style Classes"].