"Fix" your board for Opera

[James Cridland]

Background
This is a rather contentious issue.
It could be said that Opera v6 (the newest one) is broken, since it doesn't display certain bits of vBulletin correctly when vBulletin uses correct HTML code.
It could also be said that these mods are 'illegal', since they use HTML that you're not supposed to use anymore.

However, if all you care about is making your board look perfect, then you can make two amendments to your code to ensure that Opera users get exactly the same user experience as Internet Explorer or Netscape users.

Please note: I do not wish to get into an argument about whether this is good practice or not. I am merely giving these two code amendments to share my discoveries with the rest of the vBulletin community. There are two discussions, one at vBulletin (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=35509) and one at Opera (http://my.opera.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=867) about this point if you wish to debate it. Please don't debate it here.

Having said that, here are the two areas I've found so far, and the simple fixes to make them work.

Redirects are not centered
The 'Thank you for posting' message appears on the left-hand side of the screen, not in the centre.
Edit: "standard_redirect" template
Place <center> tags before the first <TABLE>, and place </center> before the last </TABLE>.

The bottom of the thread view
The "post a reply" and "post new thread" buttons appear in the middle, and are not aligned to the right.
Edit: "showthread" template
find
<td width="100%"><smallfont color="#EEEEFF"><b>$timezone</b></smallfont></td>
<td>
replace with
<td width="100%"><smallfont color="#EEEEFF"><b>$timezone</b></smallfont></td>
<td align="right">


I hope that users find this useful; I'd repeat that I'd really like not to be drawn into an argument whether this is right or wrong: this isn't the place for it.

[jbell]

I only use opera 6 becuase my IE6 is a nightmare .. what problems are people stating? I have had flawless performance with my opera from day one....

I would be glad to help out where I can in testing or whatever.

[samtha25]

On the redirect, an alternative is to move the align="center" from the TR to the inner TABLE.

My biggest problem with Opera and vB has been that the author column of showthread does not line up nicely. Two solutions:

The tables in which a post is wrapped have a TD width=10, TD width="100% - the spacer - then the inner table has two sets of TD width=175 and TD width="100%".

If people seldom or never use PRE text in their posts (vbcodes, code, php), replace the "100%" with a "*". Do the same with the Author, Thread heading.

However, this will not keep posts with PRE text aligned - in any browser that I've tried. With posts with PRE text, the only way I've found to keep the author column aligned is to put a spacer gif in the author column set to the desired minimum width.

The same also applies to threadreviewbit, which displays the thread at the bottom of a posting page.

Other than those few things, vB works fine for me with both O5 and O6 and O6 really rox. ;)

[James Cridland]

Absolutely, it's a real benefit to have software which works flawlessly in Opera. Congrats to Jelsoft.

[nuno]

hmmm
concerning redirects, you'r right, same things happens with Konqueror, they are all align left.
Yet, you can achieve better results with:
edit standardredirect template and after


<tr align="center" valign="middle">
<td>

paste



<div align="center" valign="left">

edit showthread template and replace


<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" bgcolor="#8080A6">

with


<table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">

this way will work with all browsers i think :rolleyes:
you see, Konqueror ignores <tr align="blah blah">