Safari 4 public beta: problems and fixes

The new Safari 4 preview is, as expected, exhibiting incompatibilities with third-party software, as well as its own share of bugs and stability problems. Users with add-on and "haxie" enhancers for OS X (Finder, Mail, and Safari) might experience problems with the Safari beta. While some problems have fixes, others seem to be stability bugs that will hopefully be addressed by the final release.

It is recommended that any user dependent on applications that make use of Safari or the underlying WebKit framework (Mail, iChat, iTunes, and Messenger in particular) avoid installing this beta. The Safari beta will install a new version of WebKit which may have a few bugs that will interfere with these programs. The beta does come with an uninstaller, so users who experience problems with these programs can uninstall it and revert back to the previous version.

Startup fails Some users have reported an inability to properly startup their Macs after the update. As described by one Apple Discussions poster:

"I downloaded and installed Safari 4 beta this evening, it installed fine and my macbook was fully up to date before the installation started. After it finished, it said it needed to restart, so i saved my work and restarted - but it won't boot up, I get the grey screen, the chime, the spinning logo, then it goes to a blue screen with the cursor in the top left corner, the blue keeps changing too, gets lighter then darker. I've tried resetting PRAM and have run disk utility from the start up disc, but can not get it to load"

The first recommended procedure, if you are experiencing this issue, is to simply boot in Safe Mode -- accomplished by holding down the Shift key while your Mac is starting up. After the safe boot, restart normally. A number of maintenance tasks are performed during the safe boot, and you might not need to perform any additional troubleshooting. You might receive a message indicating that the update has finished installing after performing the safe boot.

You can also try temporarily disconnecting any USB, FireWire other otherwise-connected external peripherals then re-attempt startup.

Some users, however, have resorted to an archive and install.

Mail Crashing; other problems After installing the beta, many users have found that Mail will crash. Some users have had the program crash with reference to a specific plug-in (ie: Growl notification software). Uninstalling Growl has helped resolve problem for some users, but has not helped for others; one user was able to disable Growl in Mail's preferences by first stopping all activity in the "Activity" window before the program crashed. As such, it may be that this is a preferences problem introduced to Mail by the Safari beta. Users may be able to overcome this by removing the Mail preferences file and launching the program again. Alternatively, users can try launching Mail in "Safe" mode by holding shift when the program loads. This might give the user enough time to disable the Growl settings.

Things to try: 1. Remove the Growl plugin (and others), which is located in the /username/Library/Mail/Bundles/ folder.

2. Locate the "com.apple.Mail.plist" file in the /username/Library/Preferences/ folder and remove it. Then relaunch Mail. NOTE: This will require users to set up their accounts again, but mailboxes should be the same.

Some users have had success in using "Mail Appetizer" instead of Growl for incoming mail notifications. This package seems to be more compatible with Safari 4, and is available for download here.

Beyond Growl, some users are experiencing a Mail crash with a console message referencing "WebKit". This type of error most likely indicates a bug in the program that will need to be addressed by Apple.

Some users have experienced an issue wherein Mail stop receiving new mail. The program will load and quit normally, but will hang in the activity window and prevent mail from being downloaded. The apparent fix for this issue is to delete Mail's preference files and relaunch the application.

Gmail and Hotmail, other web apps not working. Various web applications, such as webmail interfaces, may not work for some users. This problem is not universal, and may be caused by some setting or plugin; however, users have been able to get problematic web apps to work by changing the user agent Safari uses to view the web page. To change the user agent, go to the Safari preferences and in the "Advanced" section check "Show Develop menu in menu bar". Then in this menu, change the "User Agent" to something else besides "Safari 4" (setting it to FireFox seems to work).

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