Change in the style sheet weirds out Opera

September 11, 2002 6:14 PM

Opera users now see the a page margin on the homepage, where there wasn't one before (presumably due to a change in the style sheet).
posted by kickingtheground to Bugs at 6:14 PM (19 comments total)

Adding this to the style sheet should fix the problem.

html, body {padding:0;margin:0}
posted by kickingtheground at 6:14 PM on September 11, 2002

I don't think it was a stylesheet change. Opera was using the Netscape specific tags marginwidth and marginheight. Looks like Matt took them out. They are still in use here in MetaTalk.
posted by mikhail at 8:49 PM on September 11, 2002

der! not tags...attributes.
posted by mikhail at 9:19 PM on September 11, 2002

No, I'm pretty sure it's a style sheet change, since the top navigation links don't have a hover style any more, either.

It looks like Matt is trying to make Mefi more standards-compliant (taking out the netscape attributes, and fixing some strange/wrong selectors in the css), which would be a good thing. However, it also looks like he forgot to test with Opera.
posted by kickingtheground at 9:31 PM on September 11, 2002

I changed the stylesheet, yeah. There's a margin:0px in the body element's CSS, does Opera not understand that, or is padding:0px also necessary?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:28 AM on September 12, 2002

Unless I'm trying to offset something inside, I always pair margin:0px and padding: 0px together just to be safe. That way you know what every DOM-compliant browser is starting with for a base and you can work from there.
posted by yerfatma at 9:30 AM on September 12, 2002

In iCab too (I know it's an obscure little mac-only browser, but I love it). Margin on the front page, black text in the ads and for "sort by", "posted by", "comments" text, no more white text for "(x new)" -- doesn't bother me too much, and I'm not asking for accommodation, but I thought I would mention it.
posted by Dean King at 9:33 AM on September 12, 2002

Since we're talking new stylesheet already, it looks like you need to specify a :visited state for the (x new) anchor links on the homepage. If I've been to the thread, they're inheriting the visited style from the "[total] Comments" link. Unless that's what you wanted; in that case, it works great (Win2K IE 5.5/ Mozilla/ Opera).
posted by yerfatma at 9:34 AM on September 12, 2002

There's a margin:0px in the body element's CSS, does Opera not understand that, or is padding:0px also necessary?

No, Opera understands "margin: 0px" perfectly, and yes, "padding: 0px" is also necessary if you want to remove the default padding. You see, Opera follows the default stylesheet for HTML 4.0 as presented in the CSS2 spec, where the body element has a padding of 8px. Other browsers set a default margin instead of padding. This is a bit weird since you would normally want to apply padding to the body element, and not margin (which is the margin between the body and the head/html elements). Opera also understands "marginwidth='0' marginheight='0'" in the BODY tag, hence the difference in page-display between MetaFilter and MetaTalk.
posted by livingdots at 12:04 PM on September 12, 2002

(offtopic icab visibility question)

Dean, i use icab, too, and the side strip on the mf front page (where the 1 year ago, and matt's book plug, etc is) is never visible....at work in explorer it's visible, but not at home in icab....can you see it?
posted by amberglow at 1:00 PM on September 12, 2002

the body padding issue should be fixed now.

amber, I don't think iCab can handle the CSS, so it doesn't get it.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:05 PM on September 12, 2002

iCab's readme file promises that future versions will interpret CSS2, so I assume it currently handles CSS1, whatever's included in that level. amberglow, version 2.8 (here at work) used to show the sidebar, but doesn't anymore. Version 2.81 (at home) aggressively shows the sidebar: it won't collapse, it sticks to the left side of the window, and it pushes the page contents down to the bottom of the bar. Annoying, but I've learned to live with it. (Or, duh, downgrade to 2.8 at home.)
posted by Dean King at 2:34 PM on September 12, 2002

thanks Dean and Matt, i'm icab 2.8--maybe i'll upgrade to 2.81 and try it (I worry I'm missing something good or important).....if people want a good no-pop-ups-ever experience, icab's perfect!

I get that pushing the center content down alot too, especially when reading blogs and news sites, but i'm used to it (I always thought it was my small monitor)...
posted by amberglow at 3:26 PM on September 12, 2002

if people want a good no-pop-ups-ever experience, icab's perfect!

Mozilla is great for this as well. You'll never see another popup or popunder again.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:33 PM on September 12, 2002

i've been meaning to use mozilla (i downloaded it once, but it was some kind of (preliminary?) build and didn't start right away, apparently because i had to do other stuff first before it would just start up, so i gave up) but transferring bookmarks is such a pain...i will eventually though...it's the future after all...
posted by amberglow at 3:44 PM on September 12, 2002

Could somebody please point me at a simple explanation of the family relationships between Gecko, Mozilla, Chimera and Netscape? I find the whole thing very confusing.
posted by timeistight at 4:14 PM on September 12, 2002

Gecko = the rendering engine, the part that takes HTML and other files and turns it into what you see on your screen.

Mozilla = the whole browser, incorporating Gecko. Open-source.

Netscape = a commercial version of Mozilla with Netscape-developed branding and UI.

Chimera = a browser that uses Gecko but adds its own UI. Mac OS X only, and doesn't have all the bells and whistles (e-mail, newsreader, chat program) that Mozilla and Netscape have.
posted by kindall at 4:20 PM on September 12, 2002

Mozilla = browser to use out of all that (unless you have a Mac. I dunno from Chimera).
posted by yerfatma at 4:27 PM on September 12, 2002

Thanks kindall and yfm. It sounds like Chimera may be the one for me. I'm getting tired of IE showing me the spinning beachball of death every few minutes.
posted by timeistight at 4:44 PM on September 12, 2002