Safari/Java crashes, [no] possible fix ? [Updated]
Dec 19th, 2006 by Administrator
Update 2 : Very good news
The problem has been solved. See the comments (comment 3 + 4) below.
Update : Bad news
I played with the options again, but I was not able to verify these options really influence the behavior. Unfortunately, it rather looks like random behavior : In some sessions Safari seems to be able to open different sites without any crash, but then again it is not. My current work/crash-ratio is at 1:10, which means approx. every ten times I start Safari (switching the Java-Preferences randomly) it does not crash loading applet-sites. But then it is able to open several ones without any problem.
During the last weeks and month, my Safari (Tiger, all patches, Saft, Inquisitor and JSE 5 + JSE 6 installed) crashed almost every time I tried to access a website containing an embedded applet. I was not able to find a working solution on the internet, as the tips were either related to old versions, or they simply didn’t change anything.
So, after being a bit frustrated having to switch my browser every time I wanted to visit the libSVM website, I first tried to reinstall the latest Mac-OS Java update again, but also without any success.
Then in a last desperate attempt I at least tried to find the the source of the problem and enabled all debugging switchtes in the Java Preferences Dialog. Behold, right after that Safari hasn’t crashed on a single site and it even feels much faster than Firefox opening applet-sites.
Strange …
Intereschting… I found this post googling around for information on random Safari crashes because that’s what mine is doing. Strangely the crashes seem to accumulate: I don’t have any crashes for weeks and then suddenly the browser will crash 5 to 10 times in one evening.
Things I have come to associate with these crashes are embedded stuff (flash, movies, etc) and many open tabs like I have when browsing reddit.com.
I’ll try your “fix” — maybe it’ll help, maybe not. If not, I’ll just have to write some more mail to Steve Jobs
Good Luck !
Java also hasn’t improved with the latest Tiger Java-update, I still have crashes. My current “solution” is to disable the Java plugin for Safari and use Opera for these pages.
Please let me know what happens. Btw, it interesting that your Safari workes for a couple of weeks without problems, because mine currently crashes almost every time on sites with applets.
Solution:
Remove ‘SIMBL’ from your inputmanagers. (use spotlight to find it). Maybe the newer versions of SIMBL work though. But this fixed it for me.
Merci beaucoup !
I removed the plugin and indeed, Safari has not crashed since then anymore on applet pages, even after a couple of restarts.
Can’t find the SIMBL file?
If I remember correctly, it was somewhere under Users -> (Your Name) -> Library -> InputManagers
Alternatively, you could try to search under Library -> InputManagers.
Or, simply use spotlight. Hope this helps.