That’s my message too. How do you open up the spoilers?
Highlight the text with your cursor.
Put the mouse pointer arrow thingie at the beginning of the box. It will change into a large skinny capital letter I. Hold down the left mouse button, and drag the large skinny capital letter I and forth. It will reveal words, just like magic! 
Here, practice.
[spoiler]Fishermen from several European countries are disrupting shipping between France and England, in a day of protests against drastic cuts in fishing quotas proposed by the European Union.
Trawlers are blockading French and Belgian ports, preventing ferries and other commercial boats from sailing in or out.
They are also obstructing shipping lanes in the North Sea and along the English Channel, one of the busiest sea lanes in the world. [/spoiler]
Wasn’t that fascinating?
Or you can also put the mouse pointer arrow thingy anywhere in the black box, watch it change into a skinny letter I, and triple-click on your mouse to get the whole thing. 
F_X
Just thought I’d say thanks to Flamsterette_X, for “Cool Tip of the Day”.
Cool! I guess I was clicking the mouse only once, before.
If you are in Opera, click the little button on the left of the address bar to change the little dogeared page' icon to the cool dude’ icon (or, switch from Author Mode to User Mode). That removes most style, including the background color setting. Et viola, you can read spoilers.
Don’t get many chances to say this…
Me, too.
A little caveat to my tip: if you double-click the mouse, you’ll only get one word highlighted. Not much fun if you’re trying to read the whole thing. So when confronted by black boxes obscuring text on this board, make sure you triple-click that mouse of yours, boys and girls…
Not a problem, Ice Wolf and DDG! Always happy to help, and make life a little easier.
By the way, Ice Wolf, thanks for your help in this thread. I was going to say something similar to the OP of that one, when I noticed you had done what I would have, if I’d even noticed it. Not worth bumping just to thank you in that thread, so I’m doing it here.
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You are most welcome.
Derleth, in the Opera I know and love (V6.2), the “dog-eared page” icon lets you minimize, restore, or close the window, or switch to the next window. I have no idea about how to switch between user & author mode, and usually read the spoiler tag by copying the text somewhere that it can be read – like the quick-reply at the bottom of the page, or, if I anticipate a ton of spoiler tags, into a new document. A pain in the ass, but at least I don’t have to use IE.
In a particularly spoiler-heavy thread I tend to (using IE) just use Edit/Select All which reveals the lot.
Ooh, that’d be a cool way to make all spoilers, White Lightning! Then all you’d have to do is hover over it and it’s displayed! On one hand, that might make the spoiler too easy to see. On the other hand, the color it displays on my PC is red, and hard to read.
[spoiler][Rosebud was the name of Kane’s sled.
It was also rumored to be Hearst’s name for Marion Davies’ naughty bits.
Inspector Morse’s first name is Endeavour.](http://www.straightdope.com)[/spoiler]
With my browser (IE6), those links in the spoiler box come up as grey-on-black, and therefore visible. So, the thing has its limitations. Interesting …
On this browser at my brother’s (IE 6 also, I believe), those links come up as blue-on-black. Definitely visible.
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They should do that on most browsers as well, but it’s possible to override the link colors, like so:
gives…
Of course, you can’t see the spoiler text even when you point to it now. You might be able to trick someone into clicking on it though…
No, you can’t… but you can highlight it!
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In Internet Explorer you can press Ctrl+A to highlight everything, all spoilers on the page included. It looks a little messy, but it’s very fast to do.
Then click anywhere on the page to clear the highlights.
Ugly