# Rate this thread?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rate-this-thread/264392>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [September 14, 2004, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rate-this-thread/264392 "2004-09-14T11:16:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rate-this-thread/264392/1 "2004-09-14T11:16:06Z")

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On my wife’s iBook running IE5.2 for Mac, each thread has a “rate this thread” form at the bottom, a feature that is absent when I view threads on either Netscape 7 or IE6 on my Windows machines.

Is it the Chicago reader or the folks who make vBulletin who are only interested in the opinions of Mac users?

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**Author:** ![biqu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@biqu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/biqu)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rate-this-thread/264392/2 "2004-09-14T12:07:31Z")

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> [@scotandrsn](#):
>
> On my wife’s iBook running IE5.2 for Mac, each thread has a “rate this thread” form at the bottom, a feature that is absent when I view threads on either Netscape 7 or IE6 on my Windows machines.
> 
> Is it the Chicago reader or the folks who make vBulletin who are only interested in the opinions of Mac users?

**Chronos** asked [the same question](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=255675) back in May. Apparently, an older vBulletin page template, which has not been edited to make invisible those features that the admins don’t want on this board, is fed to browsers that don’t identify themselves among the more common user agents, such as Mozilla, Netscape 7, or IE for Windows.

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**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rate-this-thread/264392/3 "2004-09-14T13:12:02Z")

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However, every browser comes fitted with the Chicago Reader Online Rate Sheet. Priorities, my dear chap, priorities.

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**Author:** ![biqu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7feea3/32.png) [@biqu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/biqu)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rate-this-thread/264392/4 "2004-09-14T13:26:52Z")

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> [@biqu](#):
>
> Apparently, an older vBulletin page template, which has not been edited to make invisible those features that the admins don’t want on this board, is fed to browsers that don’t identify themselves among the more common user agents, such as Mozilla, Netscape 7, or IE for Windows.

Or rather, the same page template is fed to all user agents, and those that properly support the CSS attribute “display: none” will not render the DIV that contains the thread rating menu. Older browsers that haven’t properly implemented CSS support will happily display the features that the page template has tried to hide from view.

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**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rate-this-thread/264392/5 "2004-09-14T17:04:39Z")

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Veddy intedesting…

Thanks, **biqu**. Didn’t see the May thread in my search.

However, there’s something wrong somewhere. IE5 for Mac touted itself as being fully CSS1 compatible, and [‘display:none’ is in that W3C Recommendation](http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS1#display). So either Microsoft is lying :eek: or the problem lies elsewhere.

When I try to view the page source (IE6 in Windows, now), I get gibberish, so it’s not showing me HTML. I assume it’s the PHP executable code reinterpreted as text(?)