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November 21, 2006

Two annoying GMail chat bugs

Because of the increasing IM-ization of email, I am a regular user of Google IM even though I have never even downloaded the actual IM client. I think this is awesome because now all I need is a Web browser to show my presence.

I will still mention a couple of annoying bugs that are truly disruptive — they disrupt my user experience like hell! I experience both bugs fairly frequently in Firefox on Windows, based on my observations on home and work computers. I have yet to encounter these bugs on Macintosh computers.

• The phantom Shift key. Like most other IM clients, I can hit Shift+Enter in a chat window and insert a carriage return in the middle of a message. Of course, if I just hit Enter, I send the message I just typed. If I have popped out a chat window though, hitting just Enter occasionally inserts a carriage return into my message instead of sending it to its recipient--it's almost as if Shift gets pressed for me for free. I have only ever seen this bug when a chat window is popped out. One workaround is to pop the window in and pop it back out. You may be able to send a staggering 5-10 messages before it happens again.
• The weird focus bug. When somebody sends you a chat message in GMail and its browser window is not in focus, the title of the window alternates between say "GMail (56)" and "Bugs Bunny says...". This is the browser version of the flashing taskbar button from desktop IM clients like AIM or MSN Messenger. After you bring the browser window into focus, this flashing disappears, and the browser window only displays the usual GMail title. If a GMail window has popped-out chat windows, sometimes this flashing does not go away even after it has been activated after a new chat message. Even if I have seen all chats rooted in a GMail window, its title continues to flash back and forth and catches my eye unnecessarily. The only workaround I have found so far is to close the popped-out chat window.

Please fix these popped-out chat window bugs and make an already awesome product even more so. (As I was writing this, I kept typing "pooped-out" chat windows instead of "popped-out", a typo that doesn't seem too egregious, given the current state of affairs. Okay, maybe I am being a bit too harsh.)

Posted by Vishy at November 21, 2006 10:44 PM

Comments

Posted by: Michael at November 22, 2006 10:19 AM

Posted by: Vishy at November 22, 2006 03:46 PM