So after a couple of days scratching my head, it dawned on me that the white space below the google custom search box could be caused by an incorrect or missing setting for either the padding or margin. Well after a couple of minutes of trigging I soon found that Opera was displaying a 15 pixel'ish bottom margin so that has now been set to 0 pixels and that has sorted that problem, meaning that it should now display the same whatever browser it is viewed in.

One thing that I was unable to change about the site search box when it was powered by Live search was what happened when you clicked on a result in the results overlay, what used to happen was that a new window or tab would open the page you clicked on.  Now that I have changed to a google custom search engine I have been able to customise it and set it to load the page in the existing window, that way you won't end up with multiple tabs or windows opening.

Oh and the issue with the white space beneath the search box when viewed in Opera is still unresolved, I have tried a number of things all of which have be unsuccesful, I have logged a report with Opera, in the past they have been very helpful in sorting out problems affecting pages displayed in their browser, so fingers crossed they will come up with an answer. I will continue to try and find a solution myself as well, but there is no knowing how long it will take, I do have other jobs which are of a higher priority not only on the website but out in the factory and timber yard as well.