What are these pop-ups I get on Gmail?

[Colophon]

This only seems to happen on my work PC, but at frequent intervals when I'm on Gmail, I get the message from my pop-up blocker saying that it has blocked a pop-up. If I click to allow the pop-up, it comes up as a window with a plain white background and black text that appears to be a long hexadecimal string. Here's an example:

7cca69475363026330a0d99448e88d23ce95e222591126443015f5f462d9a177186c8701fb45a6ffee0daf1a168fc0f58cd3 09308fba7e6f011ac38c9cdd4580560f1d4560a84d5ca0355ecbbed2ab715a3150fe0c479050640bd0e77acec90c58c4d3dd 0f5cf8d4510e68c8b12e087bd88cad349aafd2ab16b07b0b1b8276091217a44a9fe92fedacffff48092ee693af

Since I started typing this post, six of these pop-ups have appeared, all with the same string -- which makes me think it may be specific to my account or session. (For that reason I have made a few minor changes to the string quoted above).

Any idea what is causing these?

[Colophon]

Nobody?

[stpauler]

WAG here, could it be the gmail chat client?

[wasson]

What browser are you using at work?

My guess is that Gmail's fancy JavaScript/AJAX stuff isn't cooperating with your browser version for some reason. I'd maybe hit the basic HTML formatted Gmail while at work. Less cool, but I'll betcha no more pop-ups.

[Revtim]

What pop-up blocker are you using?

[Colophon]

The browser is IE but there's no version number on the browser. I guess it's a stripped-down version, as certain features are disabled. The OS is Windows XP Professional. The pop-up blocker also has no name, it appears to be built-in.

Sorry if that's not much help, but our office IT systems are very much "look but don't fiddle" so I can't get into the menus to check version numbers etc.

[Kevbo]

. I'd maybe hit the basic HTML formatted Gmail while at work. Less cool, but I'll betcha no more pop-ups.

The HTML is quite a bit slower, however. The Java stuff doesn't load a whole page over the net, just the new information(compressed at that) , and formats it on the fly.

Another alternative is to use your preffered mail client and the gmail POP/SMTP interface. This seems to work fine with outlook and the Opra mail client (only ones I've had occasion to try)