On Apr 7, 2009, at 12:32 PM, Dan wrote: > >> This never happened with previous versions of Safari and Webkit, so >> I assume it's a problem brought on by Safari 4 beta. > > Sounds more like a problem with your launch services database. If > the above doesn't fix it, try rebuilding the database from a tool > such as OnyX.
EVERYBODY! PAY ATTENTION!!! Dan is giving excellent advice here. Note how the "bugs" in Safari 4 that the OP found were not, in fact, strictly due to Safari4...they were either unrelated to Safari or due to third-party product interactions. Key takeaway points: 1) Just because something happens after you install X, this does not mean that X is the cause. It's damned good evidence, and the first place to look, but you have to know your entire system's "ecology" leading to... 2) I'm going to put this in Commandment terms: Know Thy Plugins. This is hard, especially on a Mac where there is such a rich environment of plugins available that generally work just fine, but know where to look for things: /Library/Internet Plugins, Input Managers, and Application Support, ~/Library Internet Plugins, Input Managers, and Application Support are the likely places to look. 3) This leads to a related commandment: Know Thy Test Environment. Know what plugins are active, and may be involved. Know what's running on your computer! Boot in Safe Mode and see if it works, if it does, then something that's different between Safe Mode and regular mode. Apple has a knowledge base article telling what runs in Safe Mode for each version of OSX. 4) You may need to use some serious tools to dig in. A good one for collecting a bucketload of geek data at once is the terminal command 'lsof' This command lists all open files, and tells you what process (identified by Process ID and name, along with a bunch of other info) is using them. This is very useful for identifying problems where a program works some times, and not others, or on one machine and not others, etc. This is where you can find those "Oh yeah!" moments: "Oh Yeah! NOW I remember installing that!!" Sloth is a good graphical interface to this command: <http://www.sveinbjorn.org/software > Activity Monitor is good, everyone should look at the list of all processes once in a while..you may not recognize what every one does, or even their significance, but if you have some familiarity with what it normally looks like, you can often tell when something's wrong. 99% of the routine monitoring work I do as a sysadmin involves 'knowing what's normal'. Then, when something breaks, I can often quickly zero in on likely culprits. It's like your car. Knowing how it behaves when it's behaving, will let you know pretty quickly when something's not right, early enough to avoid big troubles. 5) Remember that Beta (sometimes) means it. All those disclaimers they put on Safari4B? They meant it... Beta means one of two things: "We think we've killed the showstopper bugs in our product. Play with this version to find the ones we missed." "We're an open source project and tradition says that Open Source projects never reach 1.0, so this is release 0.994.RC37B of our fifteen-year-old project that's in production use all over the world." I'm looking at YOU, Google Mail! :-) -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to g3-5-list-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
