In each reply (for any thread), the "poster" column and the "message" column has a different alignment from the previous. Since it appears correctly on Firefox (and probably IE), I'm inferring some CSS compatibility problems with Opera.

Well, I really can't describe the problem any further, so here's a thousand words:

We're going to upgrade to vBulletin 3.6 soon (hopefully the week after next). I don't know if this will solve the problem, but it's not worth spending a lot of time to fix right now when updated templates are available from Jelsoft. If it still happens after we upgrade, we can spend more time trying to resolve it.

However, if you (or anyone else) wants to try and figure out what's causing this, feel free. I'll be glad to implement a temporary solution, but I don't really have time to do layout troubleshooting right now.

A quick check indicates that the table cells in question have a fixed width specified in the XHTML code (175 pixels). I know Opera, at least the latest version, is supposed to be very good in terms of web standards adherence, so there must be a good reason why it is ignoring that specified width.

To be honest, in XHTML, there is not allowed atribute "width" in td tag. So I think that css should work. (i'd replace width=175 by style="this.style.width:175px" if I remember that well)

I doubt Opera ignores the width attribute, even when in standards mode.

Regardless, it should be style="width:175px;" if done using inline styles, not some mangles css-dom hybrid :P

Width is a valid attribute for XHTML 1.0 Transitional, which is what the JCF templates use.

In fact, showthread.php almost validates. Just some missing alt tags on images (all in user signatures) and unentified ampersands.

I also doubt Opera is ignoring the attribute, which is unclear in my above post. Instead there might be another page element causing a problem which forces Opera to extend the column. This is very possible with a more rigorous and standards-true rendering of the XHTML code than IE and Firefox produce. Or it could be a bug in Opera. Are you using the latest version?

Yes, I am using the latest version. This "bug" has been around for some time now except it never really bothered me before.

Originally Posted by Stijn

Regardless, it should be style="width:175px;" if done using inline styles, not some mangles css-dom hybrid :P

That's that, I used it some year ago last time

I use Opera, and it does bad things with table alignments too often.