webhat's Journal: Gmail Bug

I've discovered a problem with Google's Chat feature for users who have a high number users in their Google Chat - I have over 2500 entries in my address book. When the page is loaded after a successful login a script checks all the current/gmail users to check who is online, but with too many users the javascript in FireFox gets stuck in an 'endless' loop. The browser freezes within a number of seconds, which is not enough time to press the "standard without chat" selection at the bottom of the page.

Luckily this occurs only in FireFox - not in Internet Explorer - so a GreaseMonkey script is sufficient to solve the problem. (Gmail Chat Max) The function called by the script is top.js._Main_DisableChat(true); which disables the chat function. This could also be called as a bookmarklet while the page is loading.