Safari 5.1.7 Continues to Disappoint

[mnewman]

I was hoping that this new version would end my Safari woes, but no joy.

This evening I was just finishing a long hotel review for Agoda when Safari went south again: SPOD, every tab turned blank white and eventually I had to force quit and lose the entire review.

I know. It's only me. The rest of you are probably enjoying a trouble-free Safari experience with dozens of tabs open at once and never a blank tab or Spinning Pizza Of Death. That's life.

[agentx]

If you are using iCloud for bookmark sync etc just reset it.
Safari (Top Menu) > Reset Safari

If not then backup bookmarks and reset.
You are not alone.....i have been having issues with other users similar to what you are saying.

[mnewman]

Thank you.

[anthlover]

All browsers suck sometimes. Its a matter of which suck less for what your want to do.
I find sites that do not work completely in one or the other browser, particularly transactional stuff like for credit cards etc.

At least we have multiple browser choices.

[mnewman]

Right. I guess I was especially frustrated last night because I lost so much writing. Grrrr.

Plus, I had high hopes that the recent release would address the blank pages issue that seems to have plagues Safari for well over a year now.

During last night's failure the infamous WebProcess shot up to 95% of cpu time.

My wife doesn't use Safari at all any more. She does legal work here in Thailand and Safari simply will not open many of the sites she visits frequently; especially Thai government sites. She uses Chrome most of the time.

[mnewman]

I'd really like to understand what's going on here. This morning I had five tabs open in Safari: Google Personal, a friend's blog, a political blog on the Washington Post web site, TUAW and a blog on the NY Times Web Site.

Partially obscuring the NY Times page was a little window reminding me that I had read five of my ten "free" articles for the month. I clicked on that little window's close box. It did not close, instead Safari went nuts; first with the SPOD, then all tabs turned white and then I got the "Web pages are not responding" dialog box.

I clicked on the "Reload" button and, after a while, Safari did manage to reload all the pages that it had already fully loaded in the first place.

The NY Times page reloaded including the annoying little warning window. I clicked its close box, it went away and Safari has been stable ever since.

Of course, the problem is completely random and cannot be reproduced. No hint any the logs.

[NaOH]

I'm not certain why you continue to have these issues. They went away for me a while ago (I can't remember 5.what brought me stability).

Personally, the issues I've had with Safari in the past were never enough to have me thinking about a browser switch. The basis for that is largely subjective, so I'll skip my reasons. What I have done in the last two months or so is switch to using nightly WebKit builds. In simple terms, these are like beta versions of Safari. The big bonus for me is that it's just like using Safari—the ability to use AppleScript, the same bookmarks, cookies, and appearance (but for a slightly different application icon), Glims continues working, etc.

All in all, I've found this works better for me. I get generally better performance without any loss of functionality. The software is update most every day, though I probably only update 3-4 times per week. Admittedly, there's an occasional release which has an issue. But there are two perks in those cases. One is that I can simply switch back to Safari and the other is that every time I've run into this the next day's release fixed it.

So maybe this is something you'd like to try if you're looking to continue with Safari but without the issues which you can't seem to shake.

http://nightly.webkit.org

Add-On Tip: Nightly WebKit builds will automatically default to a specific start page whenever you open the browser. If you want to stop that, use this Terminal command:

defaults write org.webkit.nightly.WebKit StartPageDisabled -bool YES

[mnewman]

I had returned to Safari because some 5.x release brought back stability. Not sure which one. 5.1.7 brought back all the old problems.

Downloading webkit now.

As usual, thanks.

[aehurst]

Not just you. I'm getting the spinning wheel several times a week with no way out short of a forced quit. Can't duplicate it either. Mostly occurs when I watch a video with a commercial. When the commercial is over, Safari tries to go to the clip I wanted to watch but that server does not respond and it all just locks up. Cannot go to another page, cannot go to previous page, and cannot quit normally. It is an irritant.

[mnewman]

I'm on this build now: Version 5.1.7 (7534.57.2, r118627)

This morning I had my usual half dozen tabs open, reading news, blogs and the like. I clicked on a hint on the Mac OSX Hints page.

Up came the SPOD and every previously loaded web page turned blank.

So, I just waited. After about a minute of SPOD activity all the pages eventually reloaded themselves.

At least I didn't have to force quit or manually reload the pages.

[NaOH]

There's was something funky with that build. I got a bunch of reloads and crashes of Web Process yesterday. I switched to Safari for the remainder of the day than updated WebKit today (r118728). No issues since on my end.

[NaOH]

Here's an add-on tip. When you use the built-in update mechanism that WebKit provides—under the Safari menu when running WebKit—the previous version is moved to the Trash. So if you update WebKit and discover it has issues, you can go to the Trash and recover the previous version (assuming, of course, you haven't emptied the Trash in the interim). You may also have access to a previous version through whatever backup system you're using. For me, I exclude a frequently updated application like WebKit from Time Machine, but I can copy from a clone made the previous day.

[mnewman]

Just updated to r118799.

[NaOH]

Quote: Originally Posted by mnewman Just updated to r118799.

That's a more recent build since I updated this morning. I'll move up to that one so we can see if we have matching or different experiences.

[mnewman]

One thing weird about the automatic updating is that you don't get notified when the download is finished. The download dialog window gets hidden. At my age I often forget what I started a few minutes ago so I may never see that the download is done!

[NaOH]

I know what you're saying even though it's not an issue I face with WebKit because I have the entire update process automated with Keyboard Maestro. The best approach I know of for what you're describing is to invoke application-specific Exposé or use Mission Control in order to see the hidden dialog. I guess an alternative would be to drag the progress dialog to a visible location before bringing the main window to the front.

[mnewman]

I've never tried Keyboard Maestro. Does it "know" when the download is finished and you can install and relaunch?

I think remembering to move the process dialog to a visible spot is the best solution for me.

[NaOH]

Quote: Originally Posted by mnewman I've never tried Keyboard Maestro. Does it "know" when the download is finished and you can install and relaunch?

Not exactly. I have a macro which goes through these steps:

1. Select the Check For Update menu item.
2. Pause until the Download Update button appears, then press that button.
3. Pause until the Update And Relaunch button appears, then press that button.

I then have another step which removes the 10.6 frameworks from within the WebKit bundle, but that's absolutely not necessary.

I've used Keyboard Maestro for years, so I've already got a mindset for putting it to use for simplifying repetitive tasks. For me, it's fantastic, but I can't in good conscience recommend spending US $36 for just this situation.

[mnewman]

I'm on Version 5.1.7 (7534.57.2, r119424)

Had another blank pages incident this morning. I had half a dozen tabs open and then logged in to PayPal. Just as I was typing the amount of the payment, the page disappeared, the SPOD appeared and then all other pages went blank.

After about a minute, all the pages reappeared, including the PayPal page with the amount I had typed in.

I really wonder what Safari is doing while all this is going on.

I guess I could try sampling the process, but I really wouldn't know what I was looking at.

Oddly, when this happens, CPU usage remains rather low. No evidence of massive pageouts, or heavy disk usage.

[NaOH]

Any time I've had an issue while using WebKit, the next build resolved it for me. That's sort of why I take an alternate-day approach to updating, figuring that lessens my chances of catching a buggy release. Of course, if I get an issue with a release, alternate-day updating goes out the window and I'm looking for the next available version. I realize that's no consolation to you, especially after all the frustrations you've had, but maybe it helps.