What's causing this graphical glitch on MeFi?

March 3, 2005 6:11 AM

Is this small line generated by MetaFilter or something on my side? The first image is a capture at normal size, the second is zoomed before capture. I believe the mark appears only when logged in, only in the blue, and always in the same spot (left of the comments box). It shows about 1 out of every 3 or 4 page reloads. (firefox)
posted by Feisty to Bugs at 6:11 AM (19 comments total)

I am running Firefox as well but I can't make it appear. Is it happening in every thread for you or just one in particular?
posted by chiababe at 6:17 AM on March 3, 2005

All threads in the blue.
posted by Feisty at 6:20 AM on March 3, 2005

It's actually extraterrestrials trying to make Contact.
posted by ParisParamus at 6:25 AM on March 3, 2005

I suspect that it's text at 1-point -- you might want to try selecting it, and pasting it into a text editor of some kind.

Of course, it could just be dots, too.
posted by ChrisR at 6:28 AM on March 3, 2005

It's a transparent .gif image:

http://www.metafilter.com/images/1space.gif

Those who can't see it can probably find it by selecting the approximate area.
posted by cedar at 6:36 AM on March 3, 2005

Extraterrestrial message: "Go back to pancake references, and less pony references!"
posted by ParisParamus at 6:38 AM on March 3, 2005

Unrelated: On one of my other monitors, MeFi causes a line of pixels to die until I reboot the monitor. Using the monitor with a different PC hasn't fixed the problem.
posted by Jairus at 6:40 AM on March 3, 2005

To be clearer: it's a 1 pixel high image with a 40px width and is, I assume, a table spacer.
posted by cedar at 6:45 AM on March 3, 2005

I get the same thing with the date headers in Metatalk and AskMefi (actually, until you raised the question, I didn't realize that there were date headers anywhere other than the blue; imagine my surprise when I bypassed Proxomitron.)

One of my Proxomitron filters is (ironically, "Normalize Small Fonts & Line Height - CSS {font:}") is replacing the 20pt font in the .monthday css style with 2pt "nosize" font.

On preview: Huh. There's something just above the previewed comment too. Oh it's: "Comment Preview:" Huh. I guess it's time to retire that filter.
posted by orthogonality at 6:45 AM on March 3, 2005

A little grey line? Whatever you do, don't click it! Step away from the computer and call Sandra Bullock.
posted by Plutor at 6:52 AM on March 3, 2005

Don't worry, it will go away when the redesign is applied to the site.
Just sleep in 'til April.
posted by NinjaPirate at 8:28 AM on March 3, 2005

hey... selecting the area does make it appear .... look at that !
posted by R. Mutt at 9:16 AM on March 3, 2005

Isn't this that "contact whoever for an art project" bit of text that we all discussed a long ways back? Looks like mathowie CSS'ed the text down to 1 pixel.
posted by xmutex at 9:55 AM on March 3, 2005

1 pixel gif? Oh man, I thought I rid the site of all 1999 era relics.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 10:02 AM on March 3, 2005

Just   it, Matt. It's here on the grey as well, shows up when I do a "select all".
posted by caution live frogs at 10:34 AM on March 3, 2005

Matt, if you're really interested in making a living off MeFi, take your 1999 relics to Antiques Roadshow and see if they're worth something. :)

and don't forget those emoticons ;)
posted by wendell at 10:37 AM on March 3, 2005

Ah-hah.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 2:35 PM on March 3, 2005

Uh-oh.
posted by cedar at 4:01 PM on March 3, 2005

My guess is that it is a 1 pixel gif - that failed to load for some reason. So it's really showing an error box scaled to that size.
posted by smackfu at 5:49 PM on March 3, 2005