How would that keep **Lib ** at the center of attention?
It’s IE7. It would be great if you would make it apply only to the SDMB. Thanks. 
Maybe if you stopped posting? You’ve posted twice in this thread — both one-liners mentioning me. 
Well, IE7 doesn’t allow per-site style sheets, but the following is pretty unlikely to affect any other sites, due to targeting specific elements of the SDMB’s page design. What you need to do is open up a text editor, and save the following as something like “sdmb.css” somewhere it won’t get lost.
#posts .alt1, .alt2, .smallfont
{
font-family: Verdana, "Trebuchet MS", Arial, Tahoma !important;
}
Then in IE7 go Tools … Internet Options, and hit the “accessibility” button at the bottom right of the options dialog. Check the option to “format pages using my stylesheet”, and select the sdmb.css file that you just saved. Restart IE. Now all text in post bodies and quotes should appear to you as Verdana. There’s still a fair bit of Trebuchet around in things like thread titles, but none in body text, I believe. The more general I try to make the change, the more likely it is to affect other websites.
You might find other VBulletin sites now render in Verdana too, but I assume that won’t be a problem for you. I did try and tie the CSS in much more specifically to the SDMB’s page structure, but IE7’s handling of selectors has outfoxed me for the moment.
Actually scratch that: it turned out to be something to do with attribute specifiers, no idea what though. Anyway, the following works for me, and the likelihood of it affecting other websites is vanishingly small:
div#posts > div > div.page > div > div > div.tborder > .alt1,.alt2
{
font-family: Verdana, "Trebuchet MS", Arial, Tahoma !important;
}
Wow! It works! Great! Wonderful! Dead Badger — thank you very, very much.
Personally I don’t get the complaints. It’s slightly different but perfectly legible. Big Deal
I love the board’s look now. All the posts are very clear and much easier to read. This font is especially suitable for people who might not see as well as they used to. Much much gratitude to Dead Badger for stepping out beyond petty bitching and actually doing something to help.
ETA:
Could I prevail upon you to write the code that would do the same thing for a preview of a post? […fingers crossed…]
Well, the point is that it’s not the font itself, but the change that is distracting. There are hundreds of perfectly readable fonts, and everyone here could use a different one; no matter how amazing each individual font is, the effect would be ghastly. It’s a fairly basic rule of page design - minimise the number of fonts. Consistency is king, and if everyone starts using their favourite font, it gets lost.
Lib, you’re welcome. I’d just noticed the preview thing, actually, and I also managed to break code boxes, which should show up as mono-spaced fonts. Adding the following lines should do the trick:
div#posts > div > div.page > div > div > div.tborder > div.alt2 > div > div > pre.alt2
{
font-family: mono !important;
}
div.page table.tborder .alt1,.alt2
{
font-family: Verdana, "Trebuchet MS", Arial, Tahoma !important;
}
div.page table.tborder pre.alt2
{
font-family: Courier New, Courier, mono !important;
}
Let me know if I’ve created any other problems…
Ah, balls; code boxes still don’t work properly in the main page. Bear with me…
Okay, final version (I’ve cleaned the other bits up a bit). Your full sdmb.css file should look like this:
/* Main post listing */
div#posts div.page div.tborder div.alt1,div.alt2 {
font-family: Verdana, "Trebuchet MS", Arial, Tahoma !important;
}
div#posts div.page div.tborder pre.alt2 {
font-family: Courier New, Courier, mono !important;
}
/* Preview box */
div.page table.tborder td.alt1,td.alt2 {
font-family: Verdana, "Trebuchet MS", Arial, Tahoma !important;
}
div.page table.tborder pre.alt2 {
font-family: Courier New, Courier, mono !important;
}
Once again, apologies to anyone this is boring the living shit out of.
Testing…
Perfect. If you ever need an obscure philosophical reference, I will dog it down for you.
The techie company I work for used to charge $50/hr, then $80/hr, then 100 and finally $120/hr with a 1 hr minimum. The owner says that the higher he went, the more deadbeats would be weeded out. Of course, he also says, “If there’s no complaints, I’m not charging enough.” Brilliant.
I would just like to say that, while I didn’t start this thread expecting it to go this way, I’m really glad it did?
Mods, would it be possible to get Dead Badger’s work immortalized somewhere in a sticky? ATMB, maybe? That way, next time someone inquires about the fonts, you can simply point them there.
DB, thanks! And you’re right – it wasn’t Lib’s new font itself that was distracting, it was the change in flow that was a pain in the ass.
Ah, Dead Badger is there a way to do this same font trick with Firefox? (V 2.0.0.4 if it makes a difference)
Yep; it’s easier, in fact. Install the Stylish extension, then restart Firefox and open up an SDMB tab. In the very bottom right hand corner, click the little icon that looks like a paintbrush on a page (or something), and select “write style … for boards.straightdope.com”. You’ll get a text entry box with a couple of lines filled out already; ignore them. Just paste the following at the end of the box, click “preview” to check it works, then click save.
body,td,th,p,li
{
font-family: Verdana, "Trebuchet MS", Arial, Tahoma !important;
}
Edit: if anyone’s interested, the reason it’s so much simpler for Firefox is that because the custom stylesheet is site-specific (i.e. it’s only applied to the Straight Dope), we don’t have to worry about messing up other site’s styles. Same goes for Opera and Safari; they’ve both got similar mechanisms for per-site custom stylesheets. Much as IE7 is an improvement over IE6, it’s still got a lot of catching up to do.
It worked! FF 2.0.0.4 on Mac OS X 10.4.10. Hint: copy the text before opening the extension. The extension’s dialogue boxes seem to disallow clicking to FF’s main window.
DB You rock!
Wow. This has got to be the most helpful Pit thread ever!
Too bad Dead Badger’s a deadbeat! 
Well, perhaps he considers you a font of wisdom. 
The deadbeats! My story when I was young, naïve and foolish.
The first company I worked for in Japan was a small documentation / printing company. The president was a good salesman, but terrible in other areas so he was always losing customers. He had promised to pay for my airfare and moving expenses to get to Japan, and owed me about $3,000 when I started. He’d never pay.
We went a couple of months, and he said that he’d pay the next month. Then after a few more months, he said he couldn’t pay the whole amount, so he’d pay me a third each month for three months. Then it was back to the whole amount, but at the end of the following month.
Finally, 13 months after I started, I told him that he had until the end of the month to pay. He said OK, and so I waited. On the final day of the month, nothing and he was busy doing something at the end of the day. I told him I was ready to go and he said bye.
I asked him about the money, and he said we could talk about it the next day. I asked him what time the next day and he gave me a funny look and asked why I cared. I told him that I didn’t have anything else do that day so I could come in at this convenience. He said something like “you are planning to work tomorrow, right?” and I said no and basically it was over. Then he stopped whatever he was doing, went over to his desk and got the money out. The fucker.
I got a lot of experience out of that company and I’ve never carried anyone that long again. Never will again.