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Strange square on Gmail  (View post)

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
15 years ago23,450 views

Is anyone else seeing this? what's the point of it?

http://cheesemonger32.googlepages.com/strangesquare.png

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

top left of the picture, click the link to see it larger.
(I forgot about the forum resizing pictures)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I don't see it, what happens when you right-click it to find out its file name?

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

What browser/system?

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

hmmm. it dosn't give you the image options, or background image options. It's not showing up on the Media Tab on Page Info either :-/

Not there in Basic HTML mode. It is there with Labs turned off. I've disabled all my Firefox extensions and it's still there.
Dosn't show in IE
(Probably just something to do with me then)

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here] James
FF3/Vista.HP
Dosn't show on IE7/Vista.HP

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I can see it too
Firefox 3 / Ubuntu.

Martin Porcheron [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I don't see it on FF3/Vista. Although I did just notice that the Keyboard Shortcuts lab feature has been removed.

Haochi [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Well, I have been seeing those little boxes since FF2 (probably the last update of 2 – that I have upgrade to – before 3) on many websites, and lately I have been seeing a white space across the screen of about 10-15 pixels (height) on the top of the page in Gmail (after upgrade to FF3 I believe, not 100%).

I am guessing it's FF's problem.

http://blogoscoped.com/forum/134961.html#id134967
Yeah, I tried to get something out of it but with no luck.

Zim [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I see it too, and is not an image. Looks like "drawn" (canvas or something like that?).
Using firefox 3, and some experimental features: Superstars and Custom date formats.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I think it's just an iframe with zero width and height. For some reason, Fx3 displays these like that. I think it used to briefly display while Gmail was loading for Fx2. It's most likely just used for submitting form submissions in the background.

Old-school web developers used to submit forms to "hidden" iframes before AJAX was widely adopted. It can also be used to keep a session alive and push updates to the page.

DPic [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Yeah i see in FF3 with no extensions on Ubuntu

Above 12 comments were made in the forum before this was blogged,

Moktoipas [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

It's an Iframe whose ID is "sound_frame" which contains only a flash object

I saw it a few weeks ago. It was there some times, but not always.

Now it is always here

(I used Dom inspector to find it)

Chris [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

I've been wondering for some time where this dot comes from.. I hope someone would find the answer.

Spotted as well with Firefox 2&3, and Safari on Windows.
I don't believe it's a firefox bug, but a problem with GMail itself, but the "Newer version" only (click on "Older version" and it's not present there).
Other google pages (e.g: Documents, Picasa) do not show this pixel either.

Moktoipas [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

The whole gmail interface is in a frame called "canvas frame" which is placed on the top of the document (and on the top of the sound frame)

The fact is the the canvas_frame's body has a transparent background. I changed it to white and the sound_frame disappeared.

Si i guess that the only "problem" is that the gmail team accidentally change the background of the gmail main frame from white to transparent.

Stefan [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

Confirm for FF2 on XP. This is some kind of frame using css borders. Looks like css border art.

Moktoipas [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

yes,it is the (default) css border of zero width and height iframe.

rio [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

As Moktoipas said, there is a <div> element with id "gbar" (Google's toolbar with Calendar, Documents, Photos, etc.). Just changed it's background to white and the square dissapeared. Using FF2 & WinXP

AL7AIR [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

As Moktoipas stated it's an iframe labeled as sound_frame with a flash object inside, so maybe it's for the GTalk "new message arrived" sound notification.

And Google definitely switched something around in the layout of the GMail pages a couple of weeks back, because my UserStyle became unusable when some of its dark backgrounds disappeared and the styles light gray fonts was unreadable on the white background.

justin hileman [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

it is a set of three iframes: #hist_frame, #js_frame, and #sound_frame -> http://i.justinhileman.info/iframes-20080703-083452.png

[put at-character here]rio: by changing the background, you actually covered up the iframes with the gbar div.

justin hileman [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

js_frame has a ton (~512k) of javascript in it. i imagine that's what runs gmail...

sound_frame contains a swf located at "im/sound.swf"--a pretty convincing argument that it's a sound player for Gtalk.

and nothing i did made content show up in hist_frame... maybe it's a frame for recent Gtalk chat?

James Bradbury [PersonRank 5]

15 years ago #

Maybe VoIP is coming to Gmail chat. The only place it is available currently is the old Google Talk desktop client, which hasn't been updated in years.

Scott Fillmer [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

I see it too, FF2/Vista

Andy Wong [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Don't you remember that Gmail team use 48" monitors?

So large, the testers could easily overlook such small block.

Mark [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

I am seeing also, seems like sound.swf is inside that iframe

Joe DiPilato [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

looks like it needs:
frameborder=no

Jarred [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

I'm no programmer, but could the "sound" we're talking about be the sound made when someone IMs you when the window is out-of-focus?

[Signature removed – Tony]

Kevin Fox [PersonRank 4]

15 years ago #

Yep, it's a frame that houses the small flash object that plays new chat message notifications. There's also an iframe that houses page history data to make the back button work properly.

Apparently a bug was introduced where they dropped the styling css that used to keep these iframes invisible. More commentary here, including a note from Michael Leggett one of the current Gmail UI designers, discussing the bug: http://friendfeed.com/e/f67b3b1b-cb18-4668-9346-a3af9d4479f3/Mysterious-Gmail-artifact/

Keith Chan [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

It looks like the 'peeling' effect when you have something new to launch except it would normally be in red. It's kind of annoying and I'm pretty sure it only appeared recently (say less than a month).

patrozoo [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

For me it only appears when I click the bookmarks icon in Firefox.

Jessica D [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

It's big brother checking your email w/ you.

[Anonymous] [PersonRank 4]

15 years ago #

its probably a porn tracker for everyone who sits at home alone surfing porn

Jachin C [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

I used the following Stylish script to fix this issue:

[put at-character here]namespace url(http: //www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
[put at-character here]-moz-document domain("mail.google.com") {
   /* Force no borders on invisible IFRAMES */
   .invfr { border: none; }
}

[added space after "http:" to prevent auto-linking. -Philipp]

Juha-Matti Laurio [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

http://www.techcrunchit.com/2008/07/05/the-mysterious-grey-box-on-gmail/#comments

but mysterious still and no response from Google...

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