Why the difference between Chrome and IE9 on Gmail

[kristalsoldier]

Hi all...

Suddenly something came up and I am stumped. Please take a look at the attached pic. Notice the difference between how Gmail appears in Chrome and IE9. I can understand a slight variation for obvious reasons, but this?

What I am pointing to is the "cog" that the recently revamped Gmail shows. You can see it clearly in the top right corner of the Chrome window. In IE9, the "cog" is replaced with how the email address, settings etc use to appear.

I have cleaned cookies etc. I even uninstalled and reinstalled IE9 (btw, it appeared via Windows Update). No luck.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

 

[MWRed]

My best guess would be that, since Gmail, and Chrome are both Google products, that they have it that way on purpose, as if to "integrate" it with Chrome.

 

[kristalsoldier]

My best guess would be that, since Gmail, and Chrome are both Google products, that they have it that way on purpose, as if to "integrate" it with Chrome.

Thanks. But the strange thing is that maybe 12 hours or so back, both Chrome and IE9 rendered the Gmail page in exactly the same way - that is to say, both had the "cog" at the top right corner!

 

[MWRed]

I see what you mean. My IE9 shows the cog at the moment.

EDIT: Ok, so I close IE...and come back, now the cog is gone, and it's back to the list of controls instead.....hmmm.

 

[kristalsoldier]

I see what you mean. My IE9 shows the cog at the moment.

EDIT: Ok, so I close IE...and come back, now the cog is gone, and it's back to the list of controls instead.....hmmm.

Yeah...man! these guys - Google and MS - need to get their act together. Either Gmail renders the same in all browsers or Google needs to be explicit to say that Gmail is optimized for Chrome (and other Google products only). Or, MS needs to see how they can adjust their browser to at least render what is a popular webmail service in the best possible way!

At the end of the day, I am not going to change my browser to access a single site. I may as well change the site (if I can, which in this case is indeed possible) and continue using a single browser (for the most part).

Edit:

I suspect this is something at Google's end, because I have now tested this with not only IE9, but also FF4 and Opera11. (someone told me that this difference in rendering is to be expected in Opera - quite why was not explained)

 

[MWRed]

I can't tell what's going on really....depending on which time I go to Gmail with IE, it changes...one time the cog, one time the list...next time the cog....it's inconsistent, which makes it tough to figure out.

 

[kado897]

Firefox is the same. No cog. Maybe it's something to do with SPDY.

Google speeds up the Web with SPDY | ZDNet

 

[Orbital Shark]

I'm getting no cog in any browser (IE, Chrome or FF)

 

[kristalsoldier]

I'm getting no cog in any browser (IE, Chrome or FF)

Ummm...that's odd...because the cog is present in Chrome (at least for me).

 

[MWRed]

It's weird that it's so inconsistent. I get it in IE sometimes, and other times it's the list instead.

 

[kristalsoldier]

Yeah...this is so weird! Since I first reported this on this forum, I have never got the "cog" in IE9. However, Chrome consistently shows the "cog". This is bit of mystery and I would very much like to know why this is happening. IE9 is supposed to be a modern browser so I would expect it to render most pages correctly. But then again, the issue could be from Google's side too and I suspect that it is. But what exactly it is, I don't know.

 

[kristalsoldier]

Strange thing...that "cog" is back in IE9. And, I did nothing! Very mysterious (or maybe not).

 

[kado897]

Not for me. FF is still cogless also.

 

[fseal]

Well it's possible that since there are like 5000 machines backing up the gmail server that an update did not get propigated to all of them. SO randomly, which ever machine ends up serving your particular connection request, you are seeing two slightly different versions of the gmail web site...

 

[kristalsoldier]

Well it's possible that since there are like 5000 machines backing up the gmail server that an update did not get propigated to all of them. SO randomly, which ever machine ends up serving your particular connection request, you are seeing two slightly different versions of the gmail web site...

Hmmm...possible...makes sense...never really thought of it that way. Thanks.

 

[kado897]

Methinks its a bit unlikely that IE and FF would consistently use one of the not updated ones and Chrome would if this was a random event. It may be of course that Chrome is automatically routed to different servers for some reason (SPDY for instance).

 

[fseal]

Sounded like people were getting inconsistant results on IE as well which led to my conclusion.

If All others really were consistant one way and chrome another then the conclusion might have been that google was in fact tailoring special pages for chrome. They are doing such things in other places. In fact on their code repository they refuse to even support IE /at all/ because "Microsoft is a big meanie and doesn't support open source" (which is compeltely wrong, but google won't hear it)

 

[kado897]

I guess so but it has been consistent for me. Chrome cog. IE and FF no cog.