Comments on: How to avoid Safari crashes: Option-click on large media files

By: Pierre Igot

Pierre Igot — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 16:00:14 +0000

Dan: Yes, I suppose I’ll have to eliminate APE and SIMBL as possible culprits, although eliminating the latter would strip Safari of important functionality for me… As you said, eliminating Spell Catcher X would be much more challenging for me :). Same thing for DFX, really.

Instead, I think I am definitely going to give OmniWeb a try in the next couple of weeks.

As for DivX and Perian, thanks for the pointer. It’s not something that I use very often, but I’ll trash the DivX decoder just the same.

By: danridley

danridley — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 07:50:53 +0000

Unrelated to the Safari problem, you can safely remove the DivX Decoder QuickTime component if you have Perian. Perian's playback of DivX files is as robust as DivX's, and a bit more responsive (better time from opening to the start of playback). Their wiki has a list of Codecs Obsoleted by Perian.

By: danridley

danridley — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 06:48:42 +0000

Nothing leaps out at me in the crash report. The crash was in the main thread, DailyMotion rules out QuickTime as the cause, though, as that’s a Flash-based site.

If it’s annoying you enough to invest the troubleshooting effort, I’d start by turning off APE (I see at least Audio Hijack) and any third-party InputManagers you have installed (SIMBL, which is used by SafariStand), and give it a couple days. If Safari is crash-free then, add things one by one until you find the culprit.

(I won’t tell you to remove Spell Catcher X. I know you can’t live without it :-)

If disabling those items doesn’t do it, I’d also look at Default Folder X, since it’s patching the Carbon & Cocoa frameworks in memory, much like APE.

By: Pierre Igot

Pierre Igot — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:46:26 +0000

Correction: It was actually a DailyMotion video, not YouTube.

By: Pierre Igot

Pierre Igot — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:43:49 +0000

Dan, in case you’re interested, I’ve just had a crash when trying to load a YouTube video. This time I got the crash report dialog, saying “Safari has unexpectedly quit.” Interestingly, Safari was still open and frozen, even after the dialog appeared. So it looks like it crashed, then froze before being able to complete the crashing part :-).

Anyway, here’s the crash log, in case you want to have a look. Of course, I suppose it could all be related to my use of SafariStand (which prevents embedded stuff from loading automatically; you have to click on it to start loading it–and that’s when Safari crashes in that case).

Safari-Crash-2007-01-11.txt

By: Pierre Igot

Pierre Igot — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 14:41:11 +0000

The QuickTime components I have are the following:

AppleHDVCodec.component
AppleIntermediateCodec.component
DesktopVideoOut.component
DivX Decoder.component
DivX Encoder.component
DVCPROHDCodec.component
DVCPROHDMuxer.component
DVCPROHDVideoDigitizer.component
DVCPROHDVideoOutput.component
DVCPROHDVideoOutputClock.component
DVCPROHDVideoOutputCodec.component
FCP Uncompressed 422.component
Flip4Mac WMV Export.component
Flip4Mac WMV Import.component
IMXCodec.component
LiveType.component
Motion.component
Perian.component

But I haven’t noticed any pattern about the type of media files… I really think it’s more of an issue with server responsiveness. If Safari doesn’t get a fast-enough response from the server (and with my satellite connection, this can happen quite often), then it just locks up or crashes.

That’s my theory, anyway.

Unfortunately, it’s not really reproducible. Most of the time, if I try again after relaunching Safari, it works fine.

And I only occasionally get a crash report. Most of the time, Safari either freezes (= no crash report after force-quit) or crashes without generating a crash report.

As for PDF files, I’ll continue to download them as files and view them in Preview. I much prefer this approach.

By: danridley

danridley — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 04:59:19 +0000

I wonder about your QuickTime configuration; do you perhaps have a buggy QuickTime component that makes it crash when dealing with certain types of media? I never have Safari crash on me when handling media files, and I’ve been known to play multi-gigabyte DV files through it (from the server upstairs, admittedly).

I’ve also done things like command-clicking multiple media files to open them each in tabs, and Safari seems to handle that with aplomb.

If you run across any reproducible Safari-crashing sites/files, I’d be interested in comparing notes.

(Tangentially: I’m not a fan of Safari’s PDF handling (too minimal), and I hate Adobe’s plugin (too bloated), but the schubert|it PDF Browser plugin is fabulous. If only they would get an Intel binary out the door.)

By: Arden

Arden — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 09:12:57 +0000

For a measly US$12, you can get the crash protection power of Saft, which has a superior crash protection mechanism. Not only does it store every window and tab you have open, save all of this at quitting time, and restore it all when you reopen Safari, if Safari crashes, it pops up a dialog box that lets you uncheck the tabs you don’t want loading again. So if one particular web page gives you problems over and over, you can simply uncheck it and it won’t load.

Plus Saft has tons of other features that greatly enhance my Safari browsing experience. I could go on and on about it and sound like a marketing drone, but it’s really that good.

By: Pierre Igot

Pierre Igot — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 17:59:06 +0000

SafariStand pretty much does the same job as the feature you describe.

My main issue is with browser stability. I don’t know how much better (or worse) OmniWeb fares in that department. If it relies on the same plug-ins, then it probably has the same problems. I would still use option-click and option-Return to download large media files separately instead of viewing them within the browser.

The problem with any manual save or auto-save feature for web pages is that, in the event of a crash, you still have to reload everything. And in my experience, even with a semi-broadband connection such as my satellite hook-up, if the number of pages to be loaded simultaneously is too large, you still have to deal with half-loaded pages, loading failures, etc. So I would still want to avoid crashes and freezes as much as possible, in order to avoid having to deal with such hassles.

That said, I am regularly checking other browsers. I occasionally use Camino, for example. I would have a hard time convincing myself that I need to pay for a browser, though, even if the fee is relatively small.

By: apple4ever

apple4ever — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 15:52:03 +0000

You should try using OmniWeb for saving browsing windows. I browse the web the same way as you(even though I have a broadband connection): As I read a webpage, I command click on any link that interests me, which opens up a background tab (or window- it can be specified in the preferences), and then keep reading. I’ve had tens of windows with tens of tabs open, all which I want to read eventually. But, if OW crashes, or even if I accidently quit it (which I’ve been known to do), all I have to do is relaunch OW, and all of the pages I had open are reopened. This is all done in the background, as long as the workspace has “Auto-save while browsing” checked in the workspace window. Workspaces also allow me to close a bunch of windows but keep them saved so that I can clear my screen. This is nice if I’m doing development work, and I have a bunch of API documents open- then I go to work, switch workspaces to my daily read, and then I am set.

OW is also faster and more compatible than Safari, as it uses a newer build of WebKit. There is also a ton of other features than OmniWeb has that Safari doesn’t, such as per-site preferences, per-site ad blocking, etc. You should check it out.