Left align both list numbers and text

Question

I'd like to left align both the numbers and the text in my <ol>. This is what I'm trying to accomplish:

For now, each <li> contains an <a>, but that can change. So far I tried putting left padding and then a text-indent on the <a>.

Here is my code as of now.

HTML:

<ol class="dinosaurs">
    <li><a>Dinosaur</a></li>
    <li><a>Tyrannosaurus</a></li>
    <li><a>Camptosaurus</a></li>
</ol>

CSS:

.dinosaurs{
    list-style-position: inside;
}

NOTE: I'm viewing the webpage in Chrome 23 on Windows 7.

Answer 1

This seems to work:

.dinosaurs { counter-reset: item }
.dinosaurs li { display: block }
.dinosaurs li:before { 
  content: counter(item) ". ";
  counter-increment: item;
  width: 2em;
  display: inline-block;
}

Answer 2

You could position the list elements like so:

    .dinosaurs {
  list-style-position: inside;
}

.dinosaurs li{
  position: relative;
}
.dinosaurs li a {
  position: absolute;
  left: 30px;
}

which would yield http://jsfiddle.net/wBjud/2/

Answer 3

None of the existing answers worked for me, but by combining and building on them I found similar method that does, including for multiline entries, without requiring any tags inside list items:

ol {
    counter-reset: item;
}
li {
    display: block;
    margin-left: 1.7em;
}
li:before {
    content: counter(item) ". ";
    counter-increment: item;
    position: absolute;
    margin-left: -1.7em;
}

Which looks like this: https://jsfiddle.net/b3dayLzo/

I think it works by putting the li:before in the left margin of the li.

You may want a different margin-left.

There's no class on the ol because in my case this appears within the style of the container.

Answer 4

Try adding padding-left: 0; to your style, and changing list-style-position: to outside if necessary.

Answer 5

You can fake it by using positioning, padding and margins.

jsFiddle example

.dinosaurs {
  list-style-position: inside;
  position:relative;
  margin-left: -20px;
}
a {
  position:absolute;
  left:70px;
}