Web Hosting Talk : Other Forums : WHT Announcements, Feedback and Questions : Linux Friendly?

[Jm4n]

I don't know if this is a VBulletin thing or what, but this forum looks really bad in both Konqueror and Mozilla (0.92) on KDE/Linux. Mostly the tables refuse to line up properly (same effect in both browsers).

Is VBulletin an IE-specific thing? Going through an HTML validator shows quite a few non-compliant tags (IE specific?) and some other mistakes (starting a form between </tr><tr> tags).

I guess my question is this: am I the only one using Linux on these boards? Or just the only one complaining?

Not meant to be a flame or anything, just curious...

[RunOfTheMill]

ive tried before froma friends computer.
for the most part it was fine, not flawless though.

[Lawrence]

I sometimes browse using Netscape on Linux. Often the fonts that sites use aren't supported by Linux, or their size makes them look pixellated, but WebHostingTalk looks fine.

[Mike the newbie]

Originally posted by Jm4n
...Is VBulletin an IE-specific thing? Going through an HTML validator shows quite a few non-compliant tags (IE specific?) and some other mistakes (starting a form between </tr><tr> tags)....

I don't think vBulletin is an IE-specific thing. It displays fine in Opera.

Some web developers leave non-compliant tags in the sites because IE has a tendency to choke on 100% valid HTML. Even some of the web page creation programs produce non-compliant HTML because it works on IE.

Of course, this puts browser developers (like those for Opera) in an awkward position because they want to develop a browser that complies with international standards, not Redmond standards.


Go figure.

[Jm4n]

Yes, the 4.x Netscape really is awful on Linux, and I would never ask a site to be compatible with it... but with Konqueror and Mozilla (and Netscape 6.x), things have really improved -- enough to where my laptop now runs Linux full time.

Fonts are fine -- KDE 2.2 comes with plenty, and supports anti-aliasing (no more pixellation). My only issue with VBulletin is how the tables don't line up.

I checked out the HTML source and found the problem. I don't know if it's against specification or not, I just know Konqueror and Mozilla render it differently from MSIE. The problem? Mixing Percents with pixel widths in tables. Example:

<table>
<tr>
<td width=200>blah</td>
<td width=100%>foobar</td>
</tr>
</table>

The expected effect is that the second column will fill the remaining space. The problem is, the only way to make that actually work (in my experience) is to place a transparent GIF in the 200 pixel cell, that is 200 pixels wide. That would fix the problem all together I believe.

As for the <textarea> size -- I think that VBulletin checks for MSIE, and if it doesn't find that string it assumes it's Netscape (which normally makes form fields way too large). Konqueror is similar to IE in that regard, though, so the compensation makes this text box very tall and skinny...

Ah, well, if the above things are part of a template, at least I can fix it on the sites I have some part in... or I can fix it in the PHP code, either way.

As for Opera, I don't know what their goal is, but I hope it is to simply be 100% compliant. That is what Mozilla's goal is, and if more browsers do this, IE will soon become the odd-ball.

Maybe not, but realistically if we can get standards compliance to be taken seriously, we won't see so many people locked into one platform. It doesn't take much to break away (though oddly enough, Windows 2000 crashed three times while trying to burn RedHat 7.1 CDs...)

<EDIT>
By the way, when I mentioned that we should be standards-compliant, I was refering to browsers (ie, IE), not VBulletin itself.
</EDIT>