Can’t get “author” to stay on same line as date in theme template

I’m setting up a blog using the “nobus” theme. I have pretty much everything configured the way I want to, except for where the author appears on each line. I would like the setup to look like “F jS, Y by submitter,” but the theme forces them onto separate lines.

Here’s what the code looks like on the page initially.

<div class="post_entry" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<h1><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1>
<div class="author"><?php the_author_posts_link(); ?></div>
<div class="posted"><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '| ', ''); ?></div>
<div class="posted">tag: <?php the_category(', ') ?></div>

I tried moving the <div class=”author…link(); ?></div> behind the time code, but it throws the author info onto the line following the date.

I played around with the theme’s CSS. Here’s the codes that pertain to each property:

.author {
	float: left;
	width: 0px;
	padding-left: 26px;
	height: 24px;
	background-image: url(images/player.gif);
	background-repeat: no-repeat;
	background-position: left center;
	font-size: 11px;
	line-height: 24px;
	color: #000000;
}
.author a:link, .author a:visited {
	color: #87BBE0;
	text-decoration: none;
}
.author a:hover, .author a:active {
	color: #87BBE0;
	text-decoration: underline;
}
.posted {
	font-size: 11px;
	color: #333333;
	margin: 0px;
	float: left;
	width: 490px;
	font-weight: normal;
	padding-top: 2px;
	padding-right: 0px;
	padding-bottom: 2px;
	padding-left: 3px;
}
.posted a:link, .posted a:visited {
	color: #666666;
	text-decoration: none;
	font-weight: normal;
}
.posted a:hover, .posted a:active {
	color: #000;
	text-decoration: underline;
	font-weight: normal;
}

I removed all the code from “author” pertaining to the image. (I don’t want the image there.) But after many failed attempts at trying to get them on the same line, I gave up and reverted back to the original code (posted above, with a few color alterations).

If anyone could give me any tips, it would be greatly appreciated.