New Outlook doesn't unhide your taskbar - two quick fixes


Product shot of the new Outlook for Windows.

I quite like the new Outlook for Windows. But it has a couple of annoying bugs. One of which is, when it is maximised it doesn't let you unhide your bottom task bar. I've set up Windows so the taskbar disappears whenever my cursor isn't at the bottom of the screen. When my mouse touches […]

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Failing at reporting Android bugs


Android logo.

I try to write good bug reports, I really do. I fill out templates when asked. I try to include reproducible proof of the bug. I'll even give a screenshot or screen recording to prove I'm not making things up. If I'm familiar enough with the programming language, I'll also attempt to say roughly where […]

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Responsible Disclosure: Chrome security bug let tabs draw over each other ($1k bounty)


The Google Logo.

Chrome for Android had a flaw which let one tab draw over another - even if the tabs were on completely different domains. A determined attacker might have been able to abuse this to convince a user to download and installed a spoofed app. See Chrome Bug #1242315 for details. Demo Here's a video of […]

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What's the window size of a background tab?


The Outer window size is zero by zero.

Whenever I open Twitter in a new tab on my phone, the page layout looks weird for a few seconds. It starts out looking like the desktop view and then, after a few seconds, it snaps back to the mobile view. What's causing this? Try opening this link to a window size detector in a […]

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How do you raise a software bug with a book publisher?


HTML code - a span wraps the first letter of a word.

Recently, I bought an eBook which has a bug. I'd like to explain what the bug is, why it is a problem, and how I'm trying to get it corrected. Amazon sells eBooks in KF8 format. That is an ePub with some proprietary extras. ePub is a standard based off HTML5. You can read the […]

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Whose bug is it anyway?


A 404 error message on a website.

I found a curious little bug and I'm interested in who you think should take responsibility for it. My mobile network provider sent me this message: I clicked on the link, and got this error message from their website: The error is caused by the trailing full-stop. Remove the full-stop and the page loads. There […]

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Bug report: 4K iPlayer on the Amazon Fire Stick


BBC video with debug information on it.

Technology never works right. And video technology never works right even harder. The Amazon 4K Fire Stick is a pretty cool bit of kit. It's an Android device which can push 4K HDR video with surround sound to your TV. But, like any technology, it's buggy. Here's the bug report I've tried to send to […]

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102KB ought to be enough for any email


Raw HTML in the middle of an email.

Another day, another Gmail bug which won't get fixed. The original Android phone - HTC Dream - had 192MB of RAM. The latest Android phones tend to have 6GB. A 32 times increase in a decade. Laptops have also leapt forwards in speed and memory. Sadly, no one on the Gmail team has noticed. It's […]

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Invisible Pink Unicorns - a Firefox emoji rendering bug


The upper image is partially transparent. The lower image is completely opaque.

Here's a curious bug I just discovered in Firefox 67 for Linux. Can you see this unicorn: →🦄 ← What happens if you use CSS to change the opacity of an emoji? Here's a unicorn, with a pink font colour: 🦄 Unicorn Let's wrap that in this scrap of CSS to make it 50% opaque. […]

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Amazon Prime Video's weird Unicode problems


Description with an error in it.

It's 2019 and high-tech devices are still plagued by text encoding bugs. I recently bought the new 4K Amazon Fire Stick. It's a little Android dongle which plays videos. It's neat - but quite often displays weird text errors. Take the kids' TV show House of Anubis, the Fire displays the description like this: Looking […]

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