Mysterious Gmail artifact - Kevin Fox

This cropped up in Google Apps a few days ago and Gmail this morning. I keep wanting to click on it to expose a peel-away page full of candy and seekrit features. - Kevin Fox from email

It reminds me of the artifact in the terrible Sandra Bullock movie, "The Net." Click on it while playing Wolfenstein 3D and pressing and holding control and shift, and you gain access to all the black ops secrets of the US Government. I sincerely hope that this is what's going on here. - Mark Trapp

I noticed it too! Thought I was going crazy! - Benjamin Golub

A boat is a boat, but the mystery pixel could be anything. It could even be a boat!! - Hao Chen

Finally dropping the beta? - Kirk Kittell

my you are observant. I use gmail everyday and never noticed. The designer in me feels ashamed. - Alan Le

Why is gmail still in beta? - Alan Le

I've noticed that before - wondered if it was a tracking type image... - Rich

Interesting, it's not as noticeable in 10.5.4 / Safari 3.1.1: http://www.flickr.com/photos... - Mark Trapp

If it was a tracking image, why didn't they make it the same color as the background? - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

It is an 0x0px iframe (actually 3). For some reason they now show up in the corner. I filed a bug last night. - Michael Leggett

Can someone pls give me a Gmail invite? - Hao Chen

Seems SOMEONE broke the style on the "invisible" history-fixing iframe ;) - Daniel Bruce

So there might be candy and seekrit features inside, but it's infinitely small? - Kevin Fox

seekrit iframez - mjc

Hao, you shouldn't need an invitation to join Gmail anymore. You should be able to create a new account from the Gmail home page. - Kevin Fox

possible248: maybe it's not a real image but just a tag with an src to a script. But Michael maybe right too :) - directeur from NoiseRiver

I see it too - FF 3 on a mac. WTF? - Steve Isaacs

@Kevin: Hao is just being silly as gmail has been in beta for 3+ years now. lol - Alan Le

It's been there for a while now, I believe it showed up when they started using that "loading" bar, which was around the same time they added labs to gmail. - cmiper

I didn't see it on my Mac in Fire Fox 3 until I reloaded. Clicking on the GMail logo just tells the app to check for new mail. - Cyrus Lendvay

@Alan Le - 4+ years ;-) - cmiper

yup, me too...firefox 3 on pc! it's everywhere! - Brian Ries

I broke out firebug. It's a 0px by 0px iframe to be used for fixing the back button, which breaks when you use AJAX. The reason it's visble is because it has borders, and because they didn't set it "hidden". =P - Daniel Bruce

Maybe they should hire a UX guy... oh wait - Roshan Vyas

sharp eyes.. this must be part of the skin able gmail themes - Peter Dawson

that's where they hide the laser - Brett Kelly

Mine's been like that since last Friday. Thought it was a Mac thing but apparently not (took a survey via Twitter) It's been bugging me and I even deb web'd it haha - Mona Nomura

I saw it too. It is on Firefox 3 on my Mac. - eyeonpower

dev*web -one thing abt FF iPhone, no edit option =| - Mona Nomura

Guess I can stop obssessively trying to clean my monitor now. - James Hull

There are 42 possibilities... but I won't list them. - Andrés David Aparicio

I noticed it too one hour ago. ff3 on windows xp - Alessandro

Maybe it's related to the "yelling" dot on the exclamation mark in www.yahoo.com - Andrés David Aparicio

It's an iframe that contains an empty document - very weird - Stuart Maxwell

@Stuart Nope, the iframe is absolutely positioned outside the viewport with a negative margin; change its style with firebug and you'll see it (yet I haven't found what is it) - Andrés David Aparicio from twhirl

Yup I see it too! FF3 on Windoze XP! Didn't notice it until I uninstalled Better Gmail2 today because it slowed down FF3 a bit! - Siddharth Deb

woah just noticed that too - Tyler Gillies

Yesterday a friend of mine told me that her Gmail was grey, I will ask her for a screenshot. - Marcos

omg omg google is teh monitorz us - joshed

Little bug in software. - Daniel Schildt

I can only tell that the iframe has "closure_hashCode_" variable with integer value, whatever that is. - LouCypher

Looks like you're not the only one who's wondering what the hell that is: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008... - Cyrus Lendvay