Map legend with CSS

How would you style a legend map with css only (no images)?

Do I use div element for little squares of color or a span element?开发者_JAVA技巧

Something like this: http://golondrinas.cornell.edu/Maps/Map%20legend.png

I'd personally use a definition list:

dt {
width: 40px;
height: 40px;
display: inline-block;
overflow: hidden;
border: 1px solid #000;
}
.aqua {background-color: aqua; color: aqua; }
.orange {background-color: #f90; color: #f90; }
.black {background-color: #000; color: #000; }

dd {
display: inline-block;
width: 15em;
margin: 0 0 0 1em;
}


<dl>
<dt class="aqua">Aqua</dt>
<dd>T. bicolor range</dd>
<dt class="black">Black</dt>
<dd>T. thalassina range</dd>
<dt class="orange">Orange</dt>
<dd>T. euchrysea range</dd>
</dl>

I'm not sure it's any more semantic than @Tor Valamo's answer, but it feels like it makes more sense to me.

You can use whatever you want. There's no best practice for this rather rare example.

The description "a coloured box" fits a div best I think. span would usually mean something inline, but could work as well, seeing as there is one per line, so to speak. You would have to make it inline-block, which isn't supported in all browsers, or block, but a div is block by default, so no hassle with that. With a div however you would need to possibly float it, i'm not quite sure. With both you'd have to set the width.

So to summarize, there's none that is better than the other, but div would be more semantically correct, since span should usually contain something that it "spans".