Tons of whitespace between description and comments in MeTa

November 4, 2003 9:00 AM

The topmost thread on metatalk has tons of white(gray) space between the description and the comments/timestamp line. The space seems to coincide with the sidebar. Only when I'm not logged in, using Mozilla Firebird .6 through .7.
posted by angry modem to Bugs at 9:00 AM (30 comments total)

That happens to me all the time. If I reload enough the page eventually sorts itself out. I figure this is some kind of mozilla glitch. I'm using Mozilla 1.2.1 on mac OS9.
posted by elwoodwiles at 9:15 AM on November 4, 2003

I think it must be some odd mozilla bug, because now I'm at home on a different resolution, and it displayed fine when I logged out.
posted by angry modem at 9:51 AM on November 4, 2003

if you guys must insist on using a substandard browser, the least you could do is shut up about it when it doesn't work right.
posted by crunchland at 9:58 AM on November 4, 2003

That, and log in.
posted by languagehat at 11:07 AM on November 4, 2003

What if I don't want to log in? All the cool people never log in.
posted by angry modem at 11:18 AM on November 4, 2003

Yeah, there's an extra pixel in the page footer on my T-Mobile Hello Kitty Psion-OS Necklace PDA minibrowser, too.
posted by scarabic at 11:23 AM on November 4, 2003

It happens to me whether I'm logged in or not, but it seems to be only on my 800x600res laptop.
posted by rhapsodie at 11:33 AM on November 4, 2003

It happens to me to, all the time, on both the Grey and the Blue (wasn't that a mini-series) - Mozilla 1.4 800 x 600 desktop.

And, y'know, I switched over to Mozilla because everyone on Metafilter said it was the cool browser. That, and I hate cookies.

(not the chocolate chip kind)
posted by anastasiav at 11:43 AM on November 4, 2003

I'm noticing a new trend of people getting defensive when you say you use a non-IE browser. Whether serious or not, it's become almost a given that someone will feel the need to defend their use of IE whenever the word 'Mozilla' or 'Opera' is uttered.

On topic, I've noticed the same problem, it seems to happen when either my window size is small enough or my text size is large enough, and the comment footer will then want to sit below the sidebar rather than wrap around to a second line.
posted by Space Coyote at 12:04 PM on November 4, 2003

It's always happened to me as long as I've used Mozilla and Firebird, on the blue and the gray.
posted by rushmc at 12:09 PM on November 4, 2003

Speaking of extra pixels and Hello Kitty, there's been an extra pixel here since I've been reading mefi. In the blue and grey, in various mozilla based browsers on linux.
posted by duckstab at 12:53 PM on November 4, 2003

I was happily using IE 5 until it decided to no longer work. If I click it, it just goes to my homepage and freezes. I tried throwing it away and downloading a new one, but it did'nt work either. That is why I started using Mozilla. I've come to like Mozilla, but I don't think it's that superior - it's a different stroke for different folk.
posted by elwoodwiles at 1:01 PM on November 4, 2003

if you guys must insist on using a substandard browser, the least you could do is shut up about it when it doesn't work right.

Now I'm tempted to post something about "O defenders of all things Micro$oft" and/or suggest that your dislike of browsers that aren't the market leader means that you Hate Freedom. I mean really, do we not get enough of this in the Blue (and much of the Gray) that have to do it in a Bugs thread as well?
posted by George_Spiggott at 1:13 PM on November 4, 2003

I'm using the recent stable Firebird (.7) and it looks just fine. However, there are formatting problems abound in Hyperlink 2.5a.
posted by eyeballkid at 1:16 PM on November 4, 2003

I appreciate that there are alternatives to IE, but until they actually WORK, don't waste our time telling us that your browser is shitty and can't handle standard html -- tell it the guys who write the software so they can fix it, not the webmasters so you can continue to limp along with your cobbled-together junkware.

As a web designer, I've wasted all kinds of time trying to baby the non-conformist browsers and their inability to work right. I'm not going to do it any more, and if that means I alienate .5% of the viewing public, so be it. If you don't see what you're supposed to see, then that's the price you pay for being bleeding-edge, beta-testing guinea pigs.
posted by crunchland at 2:18 PM on November 4, 2003

Looks fine in lynx.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 2:27 PM on November 4, 2003

don't waste our time telling us that your browser is shitty and can't handle standard html

Figure out what you're talking about and get back to us. Most of the alternatives to IE we're talking about work better than IE. Unless your idea of web standards is "however things render in the latest IE". That's why these threads are (potentially) useful: if something is breaking in Opera or Moz or Safari, there might be a problem with the CSS that should be remedied. One can always hack around it so it still looks right in IE too.
posted by yerfatma at 2:27 PM on November 4, 2003

[O/T: It's suprising--at least to me--how decent MeFi looks in Lynx. These comments are actually posted from lynx. Pretty cool.]
posted by monju_bosatsu at 2:31 PM on November 4, 2003

I appreciate that there are alternatives to IE, but until they actually WORK, don't waste our time telling us that your browser is shitty and can't handle standard html

Yeah I'm going to force myself to use a lagging, bitrotting, security hole-ridden browser because some lazy, surly HTML coder likes writing to it instead of the one I and a growing number of people think is better for our needs. Fat fucking chance of that.
posted by Space Coyote at 2:36 PM on November 4, 2003

I'm using Moz 1.5 a lot at the moment (these odd rendering glitches are absent: Moz 1.5/Win 98), but I'm not yet ready to give up IE6. When I've fully understood Mozilla, like it's odd handling of cookies and the menu changes in each newer version (better documentation guys? You are chasing the market leaders y'know), I'll ditch IE in a flash.

Like you really wanted to know that, right?
posted by dash_slot- at 4:09 PM on November 4, 2003

look. space coyote... if you have a car that has weird steering and can't stay on the road, even if it gets great gas mileage and burns it clean, you don't complain to the city who builds the road, nor do you expect the city to widen the streets. You bring your car back to the dealer, and you have them fix it.
posted by crunchland at 4:36 PM on November 4, 2003

Not sure what that metaphor describes. Pretty much every site I go to works and looks fine. When I see a difference between IE and Moz or Opera is's usually cosmetic, and chances are it is something to do with some proprietary bullshit MS stuck into their renderer some time in the last five years. I'll take the newer, better designed car that has a future and at least tries to improve and meet my needs, thanks all the same.
posted by Space Coyote at 5:56 PM on November 4, 2003

For bullshit, read poorly designed, bug-ridden, and largely unsupported code.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 6:09 PM on November 4, 2003

Wankers! I just load it into vi and read the source.
posted by mischief at 6:21 PM on November 4, 2003

crunchland, can you give me a little more backgorund on that metaphor? I'm not seeing how it relates to the situation at hand. All of your arguments assume however IE renders something is How It Should Be. That is not the case.
posted by yerfatma at 6:40 PM on November 4, 2003

When I see a difference between IE and Moz or Opera is's usually cosmetic

About the only differences I've noted (Metafilter bug aside) is that a) Mozilla/Firebird render some fonts smaller, and b) most times when I ftp my blogpage to my server with changes, it displays garbage in Mozilla/Firebird until I upload it a second time, whereupon it always works just fine.
posted by rushmc at 7:04 PM on November 4, 2003

if a page renders fine on 99% of the browsers in use (regardless of the "evil empire" overtones) it's up to the 1% to either conform to the industry standard, or quit whining when it doesn't.
posted by crunchland at 7:10 PM on November 4, 2003

As an alternative, it would be more helpful to point out where the page code breaks which html standard, and how to fix. This is the way to pose the request, not "It's broken in browser X."
posted by scarabic at 7:19 PM on November 4, 2003

As an alternative, it would be more helpful to point out where the page code breaks which html standard, and how to fix. This is the way to pose the request, not "It's broken in browser X."

The "bug" I linked to is fixable (in my browser, with my setup) by changing the font size of the date and time at the top of the page to 9px from 10px, at line 178 column 120, and line 179 column 134 in the source of this page.
posted by duckstab at 8:40 PM on November 4, 2003

You are currently rendering very poorly on my screen, crunchland. Please take steps to conform to the industry standard immediately. Thanks.
posted by rushmc at 6:07 AM on November 5, 2003