Spoony Bard said:
Using IE 5.0 I take it. How do I know? Cause the boards only shoot that particular bit of cold to IE 5.0 or earlier (If you are using i.e. 6 and you're seeing that page then there's a logic error I'm not aware of or the news page isn't using the $spacer_open template correctly).
Due to your slightly rude comment below ("you have *no right* to complain about the pages") about my browser choice, I find it amusing that no I am not using IE 5. I'm not using any version of IE in fact. Though my browser is being identified to your site as IE 6. Which means that, if that is the case, you have a logic error somewhere.
Herein lies part of my problem. Vbulletin is configured to shoot out different versions of the page depending on the browser. I test using IE 6, and NS 6, and I'm seriously considering adding Firebird to that list because of the growing number of users out there who make use of it.
A a professional suggestion, do initial testing/debugging on Firebird. If it works there, it's a pretty sure bet it will work on both Netscape and Mozilla.
Spoony Bard said:
Now, in a perfect world all the browser manufacturers would follow these standards you allude to and neither I nor the makers of vbulletin wouldn have to tweak the code to make sure that it displays reasonably well on all major platforms. (No, I don't intend to make sure the boards display correctly on Netscape 2.0) And, BTW, you have *no right* to complain about the pages you get not following W3C standards while still using a browser that wouldn't know what to do with a page that follows those standards.
Well, I think it's more of a chicken and egg problem. If Web Devs had followed standards, so would have the browsers. Since the Web Devs ignored the standards, the browsers had to be tweaked so that when they encounter any non-standard things, they switch rendering modes into quirks mode. The reason I said to actually follow the standard is that all the major browsers DO render almost exactly the same if the standards are followed. I can't tell you whether or not that would be the case with this site, but it is likely that if vB followed the standards, they wouldn't need to return different pages to different browsers.
Spoony Bard said:
Also bear in mind that the people who submit and write the news on the front page aren't necessarily web gurus or coders. They are dedicated volunteers who provide and edit material which the system then applies most of the formatting to. And that formatting can change depending on the client browser, up to a point.
At the moment I have enough headaches to deal with than to tinker with the code of a section of the site that has been running perfectly well for 5 months with no complaints. In time I may address your complaints though it could easily take a day or two to do. The formatting suggestions you imply aren't a simple matter of altering a CSS style sheet or two - I'd have to dig through the templates to find the ones involved with the problem. Each edit has to be checked against two different browsers and 6 style sheets.
That's a heck of a lot of work, especially when you compare it to the simplest solution - maximize you browser window.
I didn't mean to imply that what I was suggesting could be done entirely in CSS or that it could be done easily. My problem actually doesn't stem from the top section where the other person was complaining about. I'm actually more distraught that once you scroll down (about 5 screens or so), the content is still squashed into a third of the window.
Anyway, that's why I never complained before. I know what kind of work is involved (if not the particulars with th vB system). But since someone else brought up their own problems, I decided to put in my two cents about what I thought of the site design.
