Bah. I use Mozilla Firebird, and I keep browser windows narrow.
There’s a few template settings in vB 3 that make pages liquid; mainly, it’s changing fixed pixel widths to “100%” in a few areas. I assume the admins will do this in the process of fixing things.
I just updatd a vB 2.3.0 site to vB 3. It’s not fun; the actual transition went off without a hitch, but I have to redesign all my templates from scratch. No matte what enyone at Jelsoft says, old templates can’t be reused.
Great suggestion. Thanks.
If you are using Firebird, you can get get a tool which makes editing of the user files easy. ChromeEdit by Chris Neale: “Provides a means of editing the user files, i.e. userChrome.css, userContent.css, user.js without the need to find the profile directory.”
First tell us what OS you’re using, then we can tell you exactly what to do.
Okay okay, just one more then I promise I’ll keep my “amazing discoveries” to myself…
I liked those 3-5 buttons that appeared beneath each post with links to the poster’s email, homepage, etc. Well, it turns out they’re still there, but hidden. This unhides them:
div#posts div.page div.vbmenu_popup {
display: block ! important; position: static ! important;
}
div#posts div.page div.vbmenu_popup tr { display: inline; }
div#posts div.page div.vbmenu_popup tr td.thead { display: none; }
Windows 98. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated!
For the record, on OSX, the directory is /Users/(your username)/Netscape/(your profile name)/chrome/ . The first username there is your Macintosh username, the directory you get to if you go to “home”. I think that the second username there is your Netscape profile name, but mine’s the same as my username.
That directory doesn’t start with a userContent.css file in it, but there’s another directory called /Users/(your username)/Library/Mozilla/Profiles/default/uci6j3lz.slt/chrome/ (that might be a random string in there, so yours might not match exactly) which contains the userContent-sample.css file.
I haven’t restarted yet, but we’ll see if this works…
I’m delurking just long enough to kiss Achernar’s feet. It took me a couple of tries to get it right but once I did the difference is amazing! The board is now as wide as my screen. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
By the way, I’m using Netscape and XP. I finally found the correct folder here:
C:\Documents and Settings*myname*\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles*myusername*\eqz637lc.slt\chrome
It indeed works . . . thanks, Achernar!
Archenar, I think I love you! Thanks - this looks a lot better now. 
Using WinXP Pro and Mozilla 1.5. When I arrived at the SDMB today, all the messages are full width and I made no changes to Mozilla.
Unfortuneately, no such luck here. I see neither the smart columns, nor the post-bottom buttons. I’m using Mozilla 1.1 and OSX 10.2.8, with the “Bright Links” skin on the board, for those keeping score at home.
I’m using Netscape 7.1 with Mac OS X 10.3.2, with the default skin. I see both the smart columns, and the post-bottom buttons.
DrMatrix is using Netscape 7.1 with Mac OS X 10.2.8, with the default skin. He sees both the smart columns, and the post-bottom buttons.
Well, I’m also using Bright Links, so it’s not just that.
The only thing I can think of is that you don’t have the right directory for your userContent.css file. (This goes for other people with this problem as well.) One way you can test it is by putting something outrageously obvious in like this:
*** { color: red ! important; font-size: 17pt ! important; }**
If that doesn’t seriously screw up pretty much every site on the Internet for you, then you’ve got the wrong file.
What does everyone mean by “narrow layout”? It seems to me that the layout is too wide. The main table doesn’t fit within the width of how wide I keep my browser, so when a page loads, it hangs off both the left and the right sides. I have to either make the browser window wider, or scroll back and forth.
It seems that the page should accommodate whatever width I make my browser window.
Another complaint about the new layout is that the information density is too low. The extra-large font size means that there isn’t much text on the page at a time.
I called it a narrow layout in the OP when I should technically have called it a “fixed-width” layout. The width of many of the elements is fixed at 760px (although I think this is being changed even now). If your browser window is much narrower than that, it will appear wide, and if your browser window is much wider, it will appear narrow. (Most people seem to have their window wider, which is why I called it narrow to begin with.)
You say that it should accomodate whatever your window width is. That’s exactly what the fix in the OP does, so it should fix your problem if you use Mozilla. If you want, I can also give you a fix for the font size.
Thanks, Arch. The userContent.css fix did nicely (I’m using Firebird BTW). Now why on earth would a web page set a table to a fixed width, especially one that is wider than many people’s browser windows? That’s egregiously bad web authoring in my opinion.
A fix for the font size problem would be most appreciated. I can turn it down by clicking View, Decrease Text Size, but since I open each link in a new tab, it’s annoying to have to do that on every page.
The trick when doing these is to make the selector (the thing before the open brace) so specific that it applies only to what you want it to. That way it won’t mess up any other webpages. If you find that it affects another webpage somewhere (most likely another vBulletin board) let me know what page and I’ll modify the selector.
The current setting is 10pt Verdana (a font which they advise against using because it’s pretty big for its size). The following changes the setting to 8pt Arial (and I imagine you can customize it yourself):
div#posts div.page td.alt2 > div:first-child {
font-size: 8pt; font-family: “Arial”;
}
As for egregiously bad authoring, tell me about it. 
I would have done certain things rather differently, making for easier customization and less bandwidth. They probably had reasons for nesting some block-level elements 13 levels deep (so it would be back-compatible with WebTV running modified Linux spoofing Windows 3.1 and Netscape Navigator 1.1 in safe mode or something like that) but I would have ignored such reasons. 
A helpful tip if anyone is having trouble finding the correct folder: Make sure in Windows Explorer that “Show all files” is selected (Tools-Folder Options-View-Hidden files and folders). I discovered, after several minutes of hair-pulling, that somehow my settings were wrong and that’s why I couldn’t find it. I could have sworn that I had it set to show all files, which is why I didn’t think to check for that at first. Man, that was making me nuts.
Oh, and thanks for the tips, Achernar!