White box blocks screen

The easiest way to duplicate the problem in WordPress 3.2.1 is to create a new post and go through the process of inserting a graphic. When the screen shades out in this process, you can see the white rectangle. This only occurs using Chrome as the browser, and only in the “behind the scenes” admin area of WordPress. It does not occur when using Firefox. It does not occur on the desktop or other browser windows of other websites. It seems to be a bug with WordPress and Chrome. Ideas?

I have also noticed this issue. I’m on 3.2.1 on the white box shows up randomly on different portions of the admin panel

fwiw, doing some research and I’ve been seeing this popup at various places around the web. Here’s a bug report that was once filed on the issue but was later dropped when no one could reproduce it: https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/18339

I’ve tried deactivating all my plugins and changing themes to see what may be the culprit, but the issue has persisted.

What’s weird to me is that the white box not a normal web element. For instance, when using Chrome Dev Tools, you can right click on anything on the page and choose “inspect element”, but when you right click on the white box, you don’t even get a context sensitive menu at all.

Reallllly weird.

Hm. Actually I think I may have a fix for this. By updating Google Chrome, the white box went away.

As you know, Chrome auto-updates itself, however it can’t auto-update itself if you don’t close Chrome (which I rarely do). Anyhow, I noticed that Chrome had an update pending and went to tools > update chrome.

When Chrome restarted itself, the white box disappeared. As far as why it was there in the first place, and why it only seemed to appear in the WordPress admin, I have no clue.

I’ll be interested to see if the next time Chrome has an update pending if it comes back. I’d also be interested to hear if this works for you too Cynthia.

Thanks for the tip, agentfitz. I did update Chrome. The white rectangle is still there in the WordPress admin area, just a little smaller. Right now the solution seems to be to use Firefox instead of Chrome to write posts and administer my blog, or a Macintosh instead of a PC.

If you Google “white rectangle on screen” or a similar phrase, you’ll find this is a recurring bug with Windows. Experiencing it with Chrome/WordPress 3.2.1 combination is just the most recent example.

I have that on my site when I use Chrome sometimes, and I have to shut down Chrome to make it go away. It’s an issue with Chrome’s rendering (but I’ve not seen it on WP 3.3 so it may go away with the next release).

Hi,

A client of mine was experiencing the same issue. It seems to be related to the Browser Uploader. She was using the Browser Uploader. What I did is I went to the Media page, clicked on Add New and in the text I clicked on the link “Switch to the new uploader”. I then restarted her Chrome Browser completely (refresh had no effect) and that fixed it.

Hope this helps.

Jerry

I can confirm that the cause is a combination of the Google Chrome browser and switching the media upload to Browser Uploader instead of the new Flash uploader.

I was getting HTTP errors all of a sudden using the Flash uploader so I switched it to the browser uploader. The white box immediately appeared but I didn’t put two and two together.

When I started troubleshooting it and disabling some plugins didn’t fix the issue, I decided on a whim to see if it was the media uploader. Once I switched it back to the Flash uploader and restarted Chrome, the little white box disappeared. Weird thing. Luckily the HTTP errors have gone away too.