Gmail Tasks and the Scrollbar

[Update 2012.06.20] Yes, it’s been almost three years. It occurred to me some time ago that this sort of thing would be pretty simple with iframes. While it doesn’t explain why Google would allow or even desire something like this, it really makes me feel silly about all the time I spent making these screenshots.

The other day I created a grocery list in Google’s Tasks as it appears inside Gmail.  I resized my browser window briefly and discovered what I thought was a Firefox 3.5 bug — The tasks pane rendering above the horizontal scrollbar:

Click to Embiggen
The Behavior as I First Spotted it, in Firefox 3.5 Mac

Before asking anyone about it, I decided to check if the same phenomenon occurs in other browsers. My research:

Not Just a Firefox Thing
Not Just a Firefox Thing

I thought, maybe this is a Mac OS X issue. I booted into Windows and fired up IE8:

Definitely not Limited to Mac OS X
Definitely not Limited to Mac OS X

Then I wondered, would Google let this slip through in Chrome, too?

Sure Enough
Sure Enough

Finally I booted back into Mac OS X and loaded up Gmail in Opera:

Op ... Wah?
Op ... Wah?

I’m not sure what to conclude about all this. Is this a bug from which all major browsers suffer? I can hardly believe the functionality got into all these browsers accidentally. So is it a Gmail bug? It does get in the way of the horizontal scrollbar.  I guess the moral of the story is this:  When viewing Gmail with Tasks, don’t make your browser window too narrow.

Gmail Tasks and the Scrollbar

I Can’t Get to My Gmail

I’ve been getting a 502 error on my Gmail account for almost four hours now:

Temporary Error (502)

We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is currently experiencing errors. You won’t be able to use your account while these errors last, but don’t worry, your account data and messages are safe. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue.

Please try accessing your account again in a few minutes.

I just got an email from them (sent to my Yahoo! account, as I specified in an error report/support request):

Hello,

Thank you for your report.

We are aware of this problem, and our engineers are working diligently to find a solution. We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

Anyone else having problems?

[Update 2008.08.07 11:16AM] When my alarm went off this morning I had access to my email.  I went to bed last night around 1AM and it was still unavailable.  So I was without Gmail for somewhere between 12 and 18.5 hours.

I Can’t Get to My Gmail