Is anything except LI's allowed in a UL?

Question

We're getting some suspicious HTML from our designer. Is the following valid? (note the UL inside the UL)

<ul>     <li>1</li>     <ul>             <li>1.1</li>         <li>1.2</li>         <li>1.3</li>     </ul>     <li>2</li>     <ul>             <li>1.1</li>         <li>1.2</li>         <li>1.3</li>     </ul> </ul> 

Answer 1

According to the HTML 4 specs, the XHTML 2 specs and the HTML 5 specs that code is invalid.

HTML 4

<!ELEMENT UL - - (LI)+

This means that inside a <ul> there can only be multiple <li> elements.

XHTML

Both types of lists (ul|ol) are made up of sequences of list items defined by the li element.

HTML 5

Content model:
Zero or more li and script-supporting elements.

Note that script-supporting elements are elements that are not rendered, and currently include only <script> and <template>.

Answer 2

No, it is not valid. The only allowed elements inside ul are li.

Corrected sample:

<ul>     <li>         <span>1</span>         <ul>                 <li>1.1</li>             <li>1.2</li>             <li>1.3</li>         </ul>     </li>     <li>         <span>2</span>         <ul>                 <li>1.1</li>             <li>1.2</li>             <li>1.3</li>         </ul>     </li> </ul> 

Don't allow your designer to write any HTML code for you. Hire a front-end developer that really knows how to deal with HTML and XHTML.