Thread: What the heck is at the top of my screen

Originally Posted by gugi

I made the changes in the default style which is also parent style to the 'no side ads'. probably it didn't carry over because the template I changed was overwritten in the child style, so that took precedence.

It's a pretty simple and straightforward hierarchy, so it's not totally dumb. But there is quantization on somewhat logical basis which means without a sophisticated system to propagate changes on the fly throughout the hierarchy you get conflicts like this.

I can always disable the 'no side ads', though.

Happens with the ---Straight Razor Place theme, too; only the --SRP Default and --vbulletin themes display the Google "thingy" properly. Sigh. Was something broken?

See the more details I updated my post above.
I do not have the ability to support multiple styles, so I do only one, "SRP default". The 'Straight Razor Place' child and the vbulletin default are only there for testing, and the 'no side ads' was done by Eric.

What changed was, that I updated the google search to asynchronous, but they have a lot more hardwired styling that they do not provide interface to change, so it has to be overridden with external css. Which is where the hierarchy and atomization of the stylesheets comes into play. The styles share enormous amount of overlap, so we have them structured in a hierarchy. But that doesn't guarantee that a change in the parent will propagate down to all children. (The google search propagated, the styling didn't - they are in separate encapsulations and the capsule with the code itself is not overridden in the children styles, while the capsule with the styling is.)

BTW the vbulletin default has no google custom search, the ads do not load, etc. because it's just that, the vanilla vbulletin style which lacks the custom code that implements those.

I can live with that (I guess )

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

I can live with that (I guess )

Old 1950s saying .......... Like it or lump it .......

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Old 1950s saying .......... Like it or lump it .......

I guess. But it's ugly and wrong, and every time it appears it's as if it's the first time (making it uglier and wronger). Like the man said, if I don't like it I can eat across the street. So I'll "lump it", 'cuz I don't want to sacrifice the 20% of my SRP screen width that is "sequestered" for intrusive/non-existent vendor ads, while suffering the indignities of visually "lengthened" posts and the automatic rescaling (read: shrinking) of accompanying graphics (or their lack of detail and reduced value as visual aids).

Perhaps (once again) the solution is removing the vendor-ad "feature". As the old saying goes: "You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead." (and SRP members can find their own way to vendor websites)

Originally Posted by JBHoren

I guess. But it's ugly and wrong, and every time it appears it's as if it's the first time (making it uglier and wronger). Like the man said, if I don't like it I can eat across the street. So I'll "lump it", 'cuz I don't want to sacrifice the 20% of my SRP screen width that is "sequestered" for intrusive/non-existent vendor ads, while suffering the indignities of visually "lengthened" posts and the automatic rescaling (read: shrinking) of accompanying graphics (or their lack of detail and reduced value as visual aids).

Perhaps (once again) the solution is removing the vendor-ad "feature". As the old saying goes: "You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead." (and SRP members can find their own way to vendor websites)

As Nelson Rockefeller said, "There is no such thing as a free lunch." So the vendor ads, paying as they do, for our having the pleasure of viewing and participating in this site, will remain to be seen, unless there comes to be an alternative way of funding our good pleasure here on SRP.

Alright, I got the message - you guys don't like the quality and I agree - it looks horrible, that's why I spent a couple of hours figuring out how to make the google's freebie look good. We are not paying for the custom search, and so we are not getting any support, which means that I have to figure it out on my own. I think I've done enough to make it look good on the main style and I am not willing to do anything more about this at this point.

So, I've removed the experimental styles that do not live up to the standard.

I'm gobsmacked. I cannot believe that a 20% loss of body/post/text width was worth "fixing" a visually-ugly Google search-entry "thingy". Amazing. I'd rather pay for an annual subscription, then lose inches of valuable screen "real estate" (browser extensions block offensive vendor ads). Gobsmacked, I tell you.

May be some day you could trade no ads for a subscription, but that's not an option right now and the support comes entirely from the advertisers.

Originally Posted by gugi

May be some day you could trade no ads for a subscription, but that's not an option right now and the support comes entirely from the advertisers.

I agree, I don't like the ads being back on the side but you don't bite the hand that feeds you. Gugi thank you for all the work you and the others do to keep this place up and running! No complaints will be heard from me about the way y'all have this place set up until I'm sent a bill for membership.