Hey, does any one here use Opera as their main browser? If so, do you have problems with how it displays the SDMB threads.
It seems to show the user-name/info column as various different widths apparently depending on the width of the users name. IE6, on the other hand, displays that column as a uniform width making the whole page look a lot nicer.
Questions:
Is this fixable in the Opera preferences?
Is this a case of the SDMB page being written for the two major browsers only?
I see this has been moved to ATMB. I wasn’t sure if it was a question About This Message Board, or a question about Opera. I figured the answer would define what catagory the question was in.
Does the fact of this question being moved to ATMB imply that the boards are at fault for not writing their pages for minority browsers?
I’ve used Opera on two different OSes. That’s how the Programmers of Opera want it to render tables, so that’s how Opera renders tables. Frankly, I like it better that way, rather than having some idiot’s 25-letter unspaced name screw up the whole table, like it does under most browsers.
To my knowledge (i. e., I know HTML, but I’m not a guru), there’s no way to “fix” this, so it’s not something the board administration has failed to address.
(Just you watch; the next post will probably quote the proper fix at me . )
I’ve also noticed this and agree with Some Guy that it’s a good thing. I’ve now switched from IE5.1 to Opera for Mac for almost everything. I just wish I could bind the back button to my middle mouse button. It’s also crap at loading internet banking pages but otherwise it’s a huge improvement. Of course, I’m still in the ad-free, 30 day grace period and I might change my mind when I start getting promos.
The HTML tables used to display these threads have kind of confusing coding. In each <TR>, there’s a <TD width=175> followed by a <TD width=100%>. That is, the user name box should be 175 pixels across, and the message body box should be the entire width of the table. Obviously, this can’t be done, and the HTML specification does not explicitly say what to do when this situation arises. So IE does it one way, and Netscape and Opera do it another.
Really, vBulletin shouldn’t be using the width attribute in <TD> tags. It’s deprecated.
I thought it was written for only one major browser…
What Achernar said.
Mind if I? Width specified only percentual is OK. But specifying it in pixels makes the layout dependent of the way the page is displayed by the browser. Use another font size and your layout gets screwed up (if the browser handles it ‘right’ in the first place). Shame on vBulletin.
Replacing width=“175” with width="#175" makes it look right in both IE and Opera. Netscape, anyone? Admins, any chance of implementing this as a quick fix?
I’m not a professional designer—it’s really more of a hobby for me—so realize I’m not an authority.
What the correct coding would be depends on which way the coder wants it to look. If you want the left column to be a constant width, you should specify the width on a column level, not on a cell level. That would look something like this:
Maybe someone can check my coding here. I’m not 100% sure about it.
But anyway, CurtC, I believe that many stylistic attributes, like dimensions in a lot of tags, are being phased out in favor of style sheets. This is just the impression that I get reading the specs, not from talking with other web designers.
I don’t think so. You could try chaging the “Browser Identification” in Opera to have your browser identify itself as IE or some other browser to see if that fixes the problem.
AFAIK vBulletin doesn’t explicitly say it’s only written for IE or Netscape. I have tried the board with four or five different browsers and everything was “fine” (excepting of course some display issues, such as the one you mentioned.)
Achernar, femtosecond - We would have to do some research to see if the changes you propose can be done without modifying the source code (we don’t modify the source code.) In any case, a proposed change would have to be verified on a large variety of platforms/OSes:
Windows 2000, ME, 95, 98, XP?
Mac OS 8.0, 8.5, 9.x, X?
Netscape 4.7x, Netscape 6.2?
IE 5.0, 5.5, 6.0?
Opera 5.0, 6.0?
icab 2.9?
Since the problem seems minor, and only affects the user of the Opera browser, I would be reluctant to implement the change without knowing what happens on each of the possible combinations listed above.
The web page I use at work to enter my time card complains that I don’t have cookies enabled. I do have them enabled I have checked several times. If I try the link again after it fails the first time it works the second time.
Also like Skogcat it does not work quite right with my internet banking site.
Both of the above things work correctly with both IE and Netscape 4.77. I am running windows 2000 and opera 6.01. These little flakey things tend to make opera more trouble than it is worth to me. I still use it occasionally. If IE would let me order the book marks on the links buttons I would not use opera at all any more.
It looks the same in Netscape (6.2 of course—I don’t use outdated browsers. ;)) running on Windows 98 as it does in Opera. I noticed it as soon as the new format came up, but I never said anything, because I kind of liked it. I don’t think we can identify it as a “problem” per se. If I had to guess, I would say that the designers meant for it to show up as a variable-width column, because they specified the width on every cell rather than just once for the whole column. If they had meant for the whole thing to be 175 pixels, then they demonstrated some pretty sloppy and wasteful coding here. But you can’t blame IE for not getting it right, since the coding is ambiguous. I’m with Some Guy in that I like it better this way, anyway.
But even if you do decide that you prefer the fixed-width method, I do not suggest overriding whatever you got. The people at vBulletin are professionals (I would assume) so I wouldn’t go messing with their settings.
A lot of people seem to have the impression that you must write HTML code “for” a certain browser. While some webpages are written like this, this is not in general the case. HTML documents can be crafted that comply with the standard, and any browser that also complies with the standard (and most of them do, to a large extent) will render it correctly. This is, in fact, how webpages should be written.
Dang, I hoped at least one of us really knew what he’s talking about.
Arnold, never mind. Isn’t a fix at all. Wouldn’t be even a kludge. It looked right at first, but there still would be collision with the nowrap attribute. Seems it can’t be done without some serious re-coding. And you forgot Lynx.
Just a heads up, that doesn’t seem to do anything for the variable-width situation in the left-hand column in Opera. Then again, put me in the “I like it this way” and “I don’t know what I’m talking about” camps.
Could you elaborate? If you’re interested in just sorting in alpha sequence it can be done by a right click on the links folder in Favorites.: select ‘sort by name’. If something else, then explain a bit more.
Do youhave the pop-up killer enabled in Opera (this affects your ability to launch some links without opening them in a new window)? And how do you have your cookies set (I have set to accept all cookies and advise me of any third party cookies)?
Much as I dislike IE, I never had any problem with ordering bookmarks. You should be able to export your Opera bookmarks - in their current order - to IE if you wish.
I don’t think Oystein moving his link has anything to do with the problems of Dimitri and Greg (and ours). Now I can see what Arnold means by “losing support” if changing the source.
. )
And you forgot Lynx. 