11/17/2008, 1:30pm, EST
Monday, November 17th
New features in Safari 3.2 causing crashes?
Apple's Safari 3.2 release may be causing more problems than are solved for some users, anecdotes indicate. The browser is said to be crashing frequently in some cases, with at least some incidents being preceded by the "beachball" loading icon. It is unknown why the errors might be occurring, but it is thought that they may be connected to Apple's new anti-phishing safeguards, or alternately, the third-party PithHelmet ad-blocking extension.
Safari 3.2 contains a new version of the WebKit engine, which has been altered to limit the URL types that can be launched through the plug-in interface. WebKit has also been tweaked to run extra validation on JavaScript array indices, and perform better garbage collection. The majority of security updates in the browser are explicitly targeted at Windows XP and Vista users, however, such as remedies to JPEG and TIFF exploits, and other vulnerabilities in components like CoreGraphics and zlib. Aside from anti-phishing protection, the lone Mac security fix solves a problem in which disabling auto-completion would still leave data in Safari's page cache.
Filed under: security, troubleshooting, Apple
Other story tags: Windows, Safari, WebKit
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PithHelmet
I was getting constant crashes until I disabled PithHelmet. People should always disable their third party plugins (especially InputManagers) before blaming Apple.
Me too
Victim here too. Inquisitor is the only "extra" I have installed, and the day 3.2 dropped it crashed; then crashed again, giving me a spinning beach ball leaving my work Mac mini unusable (couldn't even bring up the force quit window); third time it froze Safari, but after about 10 minutes, I was able to force quit.
This was last Friday; so far, so good today (Monday)...may have to uninstall Inquisitor, though I hear it's a PITA.
crash
I had PithHelmet installed, though not activated, and Safari was crashing every time I opened a link in a new tab. After trashing Pith Helmet, everything is fine (trashed the SIMBL folder in Library/Input Managers. No big deal for me, as I use SafariBlock now anyway.
PithHelmet always messes up when there's a Safari update.
AcidSearch
I was on the phone with Apple support for almost 2 hours with the Safari 3.2 crash problem. My problem was solved when AcidSearch was deleted.
No add-ons,
no problems on the 2 machines I've installed on.
Glims
Haven't had any crashes either. I do use Glims, but both machines have been fine.
2006 Intel iMac 1.86
2005 G4 iBook 1.3
only probs with plugins
No problems here. I don't use plugins other than 1Password.
No problems!
Absolutely no problems so far, even with Inquisitor and AdBlock installed.
no problems here in
in fact certain situations that would routinely cause crashes for me no longer do.
Flash
My Safari 3.2 crashes have all been in a Flash thread. Haven't seen an update from Adobe yet.