What's the best dot?

cross platform ASCII symbol

[bill]

I'm making an outline style "side of the page" navigation menu and wanted to put bullets next to some of the items. My question is, what's the best ASCII code to use?

I really want to use this: • & # 1 4 9 ; but I read [url=www.niwi.knaw.nl/SFgate/waiszoek/iso8859b.htm]here[/url] that this, along with • & bull; are Microsoft Windows Latin-1 Characters. If this is the case, am I limited to using the rather wimpy · & # 183; or its equivalent · & middot;?

What's the most cross platform dot?

[Woz]

I cheat and make up a wee gif.

Onya
Woz

[bill]

No cheating! ;)
I need the ASCII because there are a lot of the little buggers.

[tedster]

Have you considered using a true unordered list <ul> and letting the browser draw the dot?

[bill]

The only reason I hadn't gone the <ul> route is that the CSS will need to be tweaked. Before I go through that agony, I wanted to see if there was a way just to add the dot manually.

[tedster]

Well, I'd say you're right about not using & # 1 4 9 ; -- On my PC (Win98) Netscape 4.77 renders it as a space. Explorer 6, Opera 5 and Netscape 6.1 render the filled circle.

[highman]

I say use the <ul><li> and tweak with .css its not that diff. and is cross browser

[bill]

I'm beginning to think that way myself...<ul> & CSS tweaking...thanks for the help everyone.

[bill]

Along these same lines, could you guys tell me whether the Japanese Yen sign (¥) &# 187; in ASCII character reference or (¥) & yen; entity name are visible cross platform? This character falls under the ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) Entities, so hopefully it should be fairly universal.

[Brett_Tabke]

I'd go with middot.

If that doesn't work for you, I'd do Tedsters suggestion and use unordered lists. Just put the css info right in the UL that will override any css file or pre declarations you may have. <ul style....>

[bill]

Brett, I think you've got something there with & middot;
I did a little test on some Win32 machines (Windows 95, NT & 2000) and here's what I found:

IE 5.01 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; yes ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
IE 3.02 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; no ¦ & #183; no ¦ & middot; yes
Opera 5.12 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; yes ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Opera 4.0 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; no ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Mozilla 0.9.3 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; yes ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Netscape 4.75 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; yes ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Netscape 4.5 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; yes ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Netscape 4.08 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; yes ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Netscape 4.07 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; no ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Netscape 4.03 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; no ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Netscape 3.04 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; no ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Netscape 3.03 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; no ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Netscape 3.02 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; no ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Netscape 3.01 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; no ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Netscape 3.0 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; no ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Netscape 2.02 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; no ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; no
Mosaic 3.0 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; no ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes
Amaya 4.2.1 & #149; yes ¦ & bull; yes ¦ & #183; yes ¦ & middot; yes

Concerning the Japanese Yen symbol, this worked in every browser except IE 3.02. Neither & #187; or & yen; worked on IE 3.02 (even on a Japanese OS). I also couldn't get & #187; to work on Amaya 4.2.1, but that's more of an editor than a browser...

[ggrot]

<strong><big>·</big></strong>

[Marcia]

I received an email a while back from someone who said that my unordered lists were not rendering properly in the version of Netscape she was using. She recommended that I use the closing tag for browser compatibility reasons and suggested using:

<li>Text here.</li>

Not too bad an idea anyway, since XHTML requires that all tags be closed.

[msr986]

What you heard about netscape is true. Some versions do not render <li> correctly without the ending </li> tag. Also the <li> tag Must be placed within a <ul> tag set.

This is not a bug. Technically the <li> tag can only be placed within <ul> tags, and the </li> is required.

<li>This will not work with Netscape</li>

<ul>
<li>You need to do this</li>
</ul>

The only trouble with that arrangement is the the <ul> tag will indent the text.

<li> alone works fine in IE.

MSR

[Brett_Tabke]

ggrot, that's interesting. I assume those browsers that support <BIG> would also support middot. BIG is html 4.0, while middot char entity is html 3.2.