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When I was writing the Google Streetview post this week I came across an error with the map frame of Google Maps not loading. It was hanging and was displaying “Loading…” and nothing else. At first I thought maybe it was a server load issue, but after a few minutes and the fact that I thought “Nahhh this is Google… not twitter”; I knew something was up. Turns out that a plugin was to blame.

I searched and searched, these problems are a pain in the butt to get to the bottom of. I found the answer on MozillaZine. It turns out that the Skype Extension for Firefox causes an error, the reason not listed. But it looks like the symptoms of the problem vary and are not specifically OS related:

“Among other issues, the Skype extension for Firefox (installed with Skype) can prevent images from loading and causes the error, The image cannot be displayed because it contains errors.”

MozillaZine

I disabled the Skype extension and presto Google Maps loaded fine. The extension turns phone numbers on a web page into clickable links that are associated with Skype in order to call the number with Skype. I was on the laptop, which has Vista and otherwise nothing is different from the desktop. The desktop runs XP and I don’t have the same problem on that machine. So I am guessing that this problem is associated with Vista, Firefox 3 and the Skype Extension.

The weird thing is that this was the only site that I could find that caused the error. I have had the laptop for over a month and had the same software loaded. It was not until I tried to take a look at Google Maps that it happened.

Errors like this are frustrating and hard to get difiniative answers for. So in the hope that this post helps someone else, I thought it was worth sharing.

Skype - get your act together.