[conradk]

This rocks. Thanks.

My users like to post lots of quotes and pictures in their sigs, odd-shaped avatars, etc. This and using the legacy postbit style makes a huge difference on white-space.

I'm trying to get rid of that dumb "default" document icon... Where? (duh, nevermind - - read the docs - - )
Settings > Options > Thread Display Options (showthread)

And now that I got rid of that icon, there's not enough space so I need to add a few em's... the tweaking never stops.

I know this is not directly related to "postbit" but the point for me is to also remove clutter...

For the Show Thread Templates = "SHOWTHREAD" I removed the fugly "largereplybutton" just commenting it out:

<div id="above_postlist" class="above_postlist">
<vb:if condition="$show['']">

//later//
I removed the lower "reply" button and added a "Reply" to the left of the "Reply with Quote" below the post, as well as a "Send PM" in place of the reply with quotes inline - as I had some users really not understand how to send personal messages.
//

I should really pull this whole code - wasted bandwidth.

I really didn't like the "Results x to y of z" because it is mis-aligned and is redundant, so I pulled this code:
{vb:rawphrase showing_results_x_to_y_of_z, {vb:raw pagenumbers.first}, {vb:raw pagenumbers.last}, {vb:raw totalposts}}

I put the thread title in the thread controls bar. Get rid of the div and h1 tags:
<div id="pagetitle" class="pagetitle">
<h1>{vb:rawphrase thread}: <span class="threadtitle"><a href="{vb:raw thread_url}" title="{vb:rawphrase reload_this_page}">{vb:raw threadinfo.title}</a></span></h1>
</div>

It now looks like:
<div id="thread_controls" class="thread_controls">
<div>
{vb:rawphrase thread}: <span class="threadtitle"><a href="{vb:raw thread_url}" title="{vb:rawphrase reload_this_page}">{vb:raw threadinfo.title}</a>
<ul id="postlist_popups" class="postlist_popups popupgroup">

//later//
In FORUMDISPLAY, I went ahead and removed "Threads x of y to z" text and moved the thread page navigation down into the threadlist_controls box. This saves quite a bit of space at the top. You have to increase the size of the threadlist_controls box - but here's what the section looks like:

<vb:if condition="$show['threadslist']">
<div id="above_threadlist_controls" class="above_threadlist_controls">
<vb:if condition="$show['threadslist']">
</vb:if>
<div>{vb:raw pagenav}
<ul class="popupgroup forumdisplaypopups" id="forumdisplaypopups">