Help making sig fit better

[Mark.B]

Now, i think I know the answer to this is probably going to be "rewrite the entire legacy postbit using tables".

However, I'm just wondering if there's a better way.

Currently, vB4 sigs are pushed to the bottom, which I like. (I hate the sigs (flaoting up0 to just below the end of the post).

HOWEVER, they are taking up another block of space below the postbit, wherwas on my 3.8 site I had styled it so they fitted WITHIN the postbit.

To explain better what I mean:

Here is how my vB4 postbit looks at present:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2010/11/2.jpg

And here is a mockup of how I would LIKE it to look:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2010/11/3.jpg

Is there any feasible way to achieve this on vB4 without completely re-writing the postbit? It was easy enough on vB3 due to the table structure.

[Mark.B]

I did it!

I thought, I can't be bothered trying to rewrite the entire postbit_legacy template, and besides I'd make a right mess of it, so how about if I just throw some basic tables around what's already there and see what happens?"

And - unbelievably - within 30 minutes and with a few tweaks, it's working perfectly! tested in Chrome, Firefox and IE8 anyway and everything (as far as i can see) still works, including highlighting on inlinemod and the quick edit box.

That's too good to be true, SOMETHING has got to be broken. But I'll wait and see.

Not sure if this is a tribute to the flexibility of vB4's CSS or what.

Of course, it does mean I've got yet another table! I feel like I've got more tables now than vB3 had! But as long as it looks right to the end user, I don't actually care.

The blow screenshot is no longer a mockup, it's an actual screenshot from the test site:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2010/12/78.jpg

[Lynne]

Nice!

[Mark.B]

Thanks.

Got to check it in IE7 yet but there's a lot of things I have to tweak for that...and IE6 is just....arrrggh....

[Lynne]

hehe. On my site, according to google analytics, 40% of the users use IE. Of those 40%, 81% use IE8 and 14% use IE7 and 1% user IE9. I'm not gonna worry about that last 4%. (Yeah, I'm a mean, mean admin!)

[Mark.B]

hehe. On my site, according to google analytics, 40% of the users use IE. Of those 40%, 81% use IE8 and 14% use IE7 and 1% user IE9. I'm not gonna worry about that last 4%. (Yeah, I'm a mean, mean admin!)
I've pretty much decided that IE6 users are going to have to be "unsupported" once we move to vB4. They pretty much are anyway since my 3.8 site's full of PNGs and various CSS tricks that IE6 doesn't like.

As far as I can tell most things "work" in vB4 on IE6, the only thing I'll want to really do is sort out the "enormous avatars" issue, not quite sure why they do that in IE6 but I'm sure a browser conditional can sort it.

IE7, the only thing I am now aware of (unless this postbit change broke anything) is my tweaked clickable smiliey boxes don't display properly...the smilies don't sit within the box, they spill out. I think this is due to the smiliebits using <li> tags rather than <td> tags as they did in 3.8. And I don't think there's an easy fix. I might have to conditionalise them into not appearing in IE7 at all....

Beyond that I'll rig up some sort of notice at the top advising IE6 users that the site may not function or display correctly. If it's good enough for Facebook, Google etc then it's good enough for us.

[Bluebell]

You must share this beautiful thing Mark B, we've been wanting that for a long time.

[seite7]

Yes, please share! :-)

[Mark.B]

I will try to next week (on hols for a few days now).

The problem is that my postbit is now a bit of an untidy mess, template wise, and I need to clean it up a bit to make any instructions meaningful.

My best bet might be to create a default style, and try and reapply those specific changes to the default postbit legacy, then I'll throw the lot in here for people to play with.

Not guarantees on timescales, I'll do it when I can. Also bear in mind that this uses tables so will probably not be "valid code" by various standards. But it works.

Finally it's not quite right in IE7, the top part (ion red on mine) doesn't display correctly. I'm sure there's a fairly easy fix to that though.

[OurCouponHome]

What is wrong with me that I can't see the difference?

[Mark.B]

In my example it's fairly subtle as my sig is small.

If you look at my sig in the first post, in the first example, it doesn't start until AFTER all the info in the left hand side of the postbit. What this means is that for short posts (eg one line), you will get a block as wasted space on the right, between the post and the sig, and THEN you get another block of wasted space on the LEFT, alongside the sig.

What is needed is for the two blocks of space to be effectively combined.

So a postbit is EITHER as long as the column on the left, OR as long as the main block on the right.

By default the sig gets tagged on after everything else, which can look ugly and takes up too much space.

[Juggernaut]

Will you share your answer to the sig problem in VB4, Mark? :)