Q:

Is there a way to format dates inline in a VisualForce page? 

In a .page file, I have the following:
<li>Created on: {! proposal. CreatedDate}</li>

which prints out something really ugly like Created on: Thu Aug 22 01:00:35 GMT 2013. 
Is there a way to format the date inline for date only with something like this (I am totally making stuff up here):
<li>Created on: {! proposal. CreatedDate:mm/dd/yyyy}</li>

A:

You need to output the date/time field as a text and format it
<apex:outputText value=" {0, date, MM/dd/yyyy}" rendered="{!NOT(ISNULL(proposal. CreatedDate))}">
    <apex:param value="{!proposal. CreatedDate}" />
</apex:outputText>

