Julie, I'm not really a webmonkey myself, but I'm guessing the issue is with Firefox's interface with Gmail, since when I look at the source code of your email I see, surrounding the mysterious numbers, a bunch of formatting code with tag IDs that reflect being specific to creating the background you're seeing and generally making your emails look right in Mozilla (e.g. '-moz-background-clip:'). As someone once responsible for overseeing the uniform display of a certain elite university's websites, I can tell you that creating code that keeps things looking the same from one browser to the next is extremely challenging and can often result in unintended "artifacts" such as you're seeing, particularly when an updated version of a browser is involved (and Firefox is engineered to check for and install updates on its own). Since I'm finding html code in your email, that tells me you've got a gmail setting for html enabled. Turning that off (i.e. using "plain text" for the display and encoding of your messages) will likely fix it. If you are attached to seeing all the pretty html styles and whatnot, you might try using a different browser and see if that changes anything. If you're conspiracy minded, you can put it down to a ham-fisted attempt by Google to get everyone on their new Chrome browser. -Wm. Dolphin Waxing nostalgic for the days when he had a pen of webmonkeys at his disposal From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Julie Krueger Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 5:07 PM To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Help -- mysterious numbers On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 5:11 PM, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote: If you'll let me know what program it is, I'll ask my son in Seattle, if he has any hunches. Andreas or Paul Stone, may solve the problem effortlessly, of course. I did, and he said 'It's a needle in a haystack sort of a thing without knowing what OS/browser combination she's using, whether in Gmail she's using the "older version" or "basic HTML" options, and if this behavior occurs on other web sites or in other software.' So, there you have it. Is gmail an application, I mean, do you download it? If it is an app, would it be possible to uninstall and then reinstall it? Your son will know from gmail -- it's a web application. I don't use the html, but the "standard" view (the current version, nothing really "old"). OS is WIN XP, Browser is Mozilla Firefox, and so far no other websites or software ... grrrr. Julie Krueger I have the College's computer user services to deal with such things. I also get free flu shots. Robert Paul, living high ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html 48 49 50 52