Template list behavior when sorting results

Well, yes and no. It is a known side-effect when the browser does an early rendering pass before reaching the end of the HTML. This has to do with the problem that at that point it is unknown wether or not there is a sidebar to the right.

There is a CSS selector that reduces the width of the .content element if it is not the last child. For some reason that condition is true in these cases, although it actually is not. My best guess is that this is an incorrect prediction of the early rendering pass which uses an incomplete HTML document. Once the next rendering pass takes place it notices its previous mistake and corrects itself.

The only way to solve this for good is to move the right sidebar “physically” in front of the content, effectively moving it from the footer to the header template. We can then write the result into a buffer that is then output after the content as it should. This would keep the “physical” location in the rendered HTML the same but provides us with the runtime knowledge wether or not there will be a sidebar after the content element.

However, this will break any plugin that relies on the boxesSidebarRightTop and boxesSidebarRightBottom event of the footer template. This might be an acceptable trade-off because this really is an annoying bug and it shows up everywhere. It can even be observed on threads with long posts, effectively everywhere where an early rendering pass is triggered. This is a backwards incompatible change though, but this is also the version 6.0 so this might be last opportunity for an extended period of time.