I went and played around with the html of a sample page (on my own computer) and figured out why it doesn’t look right in Netscape. The problem is with the way Netscape handles nested tables. To get both the “Last Post” title and “New Thread” graphic into the same column of the table, vBulletin puts a smaller table into the top row. Netscape makes this smaller table take up as much room as it can, squeezing everything else out of the way.
There are a few ways to get around this. One would be to divide the last column up into two columns and use a COLSPAN=2 tag in all the other rows. Another would be to put both items into one cell of the table. The easiest would be to simply keep the “New Thread” graphic outside the table, IMHO.
Now why as a college student I’m staying up till dawn on a Saturday night figuring out why the SDMB doesn’t look right on Netscape (especially considering that I only tonight even got around to downloading it) is a completely different issue.
I’ve reverse engineered the vBulletin beta version 1.1.1 code running on their web site and have incorporated it as a temporary fix on SDMB. Netscape users should see a marked improvement in the forum display screen. All users should note that the “new thread” icon is now on the left hand edge of the forum display screen instead of the right. This modification is not extensively tested so I won’t be surprized if there are further issues but it’s rendering much better in my Netscape 3.02 browser. Comments appreciated.
TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Three weeks, one day, 8 minutes and 16 seconds.
880 cigarettes not smoked, saving $110.03.
Life saved: 3 days, 1 hour, 20 minutes.
Actually, it’s not a bad idea; if the page looks good on an ancient browser, it’ll look good anywhere.
And . . . it’s the same old story, as my grandma used to say, “the cobbler’s children have no shoes.” It’s the users here for fun that get all the nice new toys. After wrestling with this stuff all day, who wants to do more maintenance and upgrade at night? Forget it!
