CSS-only styles?

[FractalizeR]

Hello.

Have anyone did CSS-only styles for VB? Styles with template changes are difficult to maintain and I that's why I would like to have a CSS-only style to ease future updates.

[SEOvB]

not currently possible

It will certainly be a glorious day when it does happen though. I heard a rumor of vb4 being CSS driven instead of a billion embedded tables, but you know how that goes.

[SEOvB]

I wouldn't get your hopes up to high.

[Michael Morris]

Originally Posted by FRDS

not currently possible

I accept the challenge. I don't intend to remove ***every*** table - tables are for tabular data and certain parts of vbulletin are tabular in nature (thread and forum lists). But removing the layout tables can be done.

[Bellardia]

Originally Posted by Michael Morris

I accept the challenge. I don't intend to remove ***every*** table - tables are for tabular data and certain parts of vbulletin are tabular in nature (thread and forum lists). But removing the layout tables can be done.

While although a nice idea in theory, not all browsers support css rules properly so doing this would be impossible unless you maintained a large list of styles for each browser.

[Michael Morris]

I will be doing 2 corrective sheets for the IE6 and IE7. Outside of that the browser must pass Acid 2. That's 99.9% of the browsers out there. Firefox 2 is the most common browser that doesn't fall into this group.

Browsers that don't support CSS properly need to die. If computing in general progressed with the same attitude that web sites have regarding old browsers we'd be seeing new software shackled to the capabilities of 486 computers running Windows 3.1 -- or worse Commodore 64's and Apple II's. There comes a time to die.

vBulletin's current default set supports browsers as old as Netscape 4 and IE 4. To be honest, that's a ridiculous amount of backward compatibility equivalent to a video game desinger making sure his newest game can run on a Playstation 1.

[MTGDarkness]

I still use and like Playstation 1. However, you have a point. I tried for ages to get my site to work on all browsers, and then eventually just gave up and started using wordpress.

I personally would say that I prefer the way phpBB or SMF does it with styles; storing the templates in the database means that a normal person like me who doesn't do XML can't make heads or tails of a theme before uploading it.

[Michael Morris]

Backwards support = limits. So far it's been tolerable since newer browsers can't do much that IE6 can't do.

Sometime next year though it's going to change due to two technologies about to hit final on spec. CSS 3 and HTML 5. HTML 5 alone in it's ability to allow embedded fonts and the <canvas> tag. The features in the two amount to the biggest jump since Netscape 1 to Netscape 2. There will be no workarounds - either your browser can handle them or it can't.

Hopefully they will form the bullet that finally kills IE 6

[MTGDarkness]

I pray to god. I mean, even after going with the aforementioned solutions, I STILL couldn't get stuff to render right in IE6!