CSS to line break before/after a particular `inline-block` item

I've been able to make it work on inline LI elements. Unfortunately, it does not work if the LI elements are inline-block:

Live demo: http://jsfiddle.net/dWkdp/

Or the cliff notes version:

li { 
     display: inline; 
}
li:nth-child(3):after { 
     content: "\A";
     white-space: pre; 
}

You are not interested in a lot of "solutions" to your problem. I do not think there really is a good way to do what you want to do. Anything you insert using :after and content has exactly the same syntactic and semantic validity it would have done if you had just written it in there yourself.

The tools CSS provide work. You should just float the lis and then clear: left when you want to start a new line, as you have mentioned:

See an example: http://jsfiddle.net/marcuswhybrow/YMN7U/5/

When rewriting the html is allowed, you can nest <ul>s within the <ul> and just let the inner <li>s display as inline-block. This would also semantically make sense IMHO, as the grouping also is reflected within the html.

<ul>
    <li>
        <ul>
            <li>Item 1</li>
            <li>Item 2</li>
            <li>Item 3</li>
        </ul>
    </li>
    <li>
        <ul>
            <li>Item 4</li>
            <li>Item 5</li>
            <li>Item 6</li>
        </ul>
    </li>
</ul>

li li { display:inline-block; }

Demo

$(function() { $('img').attr('src', 'http://phrogz.net/tmp/alphaball.png'); }); h3 { border-bottom: 1px solid #ccc; font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: bold; } ul { margin: 0.5em auto; list-style-type: none; } li li { text-align: center; display: inline-block; padding: 0.1em 1em; } img { width: 64px; display: block; margin: 0 auto; }

Features

• • Smells Good
  • Tastes Great
  • Delicious
• • Wholesome
  • Eats Children
  • Yo' Mama

An easy way to split lists into rows is by floating the individual list items and then the item that you want to go to the next line you can clear the float.

for example

<li style="float: left; display: inline-block"></li>
<li style="float: left; display: inline-block"></li>
<li style="float: left; display: inline-block"></li>

<li style="float: left; display: inline-block; clear: both"></li> --- this will start on a new line
<li style="float: left; display: inline-block"></li>
<li style="float: left; display: inline-block"></li>

I know you didn't want to use floats and the question was just theory but in case anyone finds this useful, here's a solution using floats.

Add a class of left to your li elements that you want to float:

<li class="left"><img src="http://phrogz.net/tmp/alphaball.png">Smells Good</li>

and amend your CSS as follows:

li { text-align:center; float: left; clear: left; padding:0.1em 1em }
.left {float: left; clear: none;}

http://jsfiddle.net/chut319/xJ3pe/

You don't need to specify widths or inline-blocks and works as far back as IE6.

I accomplished this by creating a ::before selector for the first inline element in the row, and making that selector a block with a top or bottom margin to separate rows a little bit.

.1st_item::before
{
  content:"";
  display:block;
  margin-top: 5px;
}

.1st_item
{
  color:orange;
  font-weight: bold;
  margin-right: 1em;
}

.2nd_item
{
  color: blue;
}

A better solution is to use -webkit-columns:2;

http://jsfiddle.net/YMN7U/889/

 ul { margin:0.5em auto;
-webkit-columns:2;
}

Note sure this will work, depending how you render the page. But how about just starting a new unordered list?

i.e.

---

This causes accessibility issues.

Maybe it's is completely possible with only CSS but I prefer to avoid "float" as much as I can because it interferes with it's parent's height.

If you are using jQuery, you can create a simple `wrapN` plugin that is similar to `wrapAll` except it only wraps "N" elements and then breaks and wraps the next "N" elements using a loop. Then set your wrappers class to `display: block;`.

(function ($) {
    $.fn.wrapN = function (wrapper, n, start) {
        if (wrapper === undefined || n === undefined) return false;
        if (start === undefined) start = 0;
        for (var i = start; i < $(this).size(); i += n)
           $(this).slice(i, i + n).wrapAll(wrapper);
        return this;
    };
}(jQuery));

$(document).ready(function () {
    $("li").wrapN("<span class='break' />", 3);
});

Here is a JSFiddle of the finished product:

http://jsfiddle.net/dustinpoissant/L79ahLoz/