Safari 3.2: crashing, broken plugins and installation problems

Yesterday, Apple released Safari 3.2, which addresses a number of bugs including those pertaining to image handling, the processing of XML files, and several security vulnerabilities. In addition the update adds support for anti-phishing technology to help protect users from malicious websites, which has been one of the major criticisms of previous versions of Safari.

NOTE: Before updating the software, which applies changes to some system files, users should ensure they have a full backup of their systems using either Time Machine or a disk cloning program such as SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.

Crashing caused by various add-ons While the update provides welcomed enhancements and bug fixes, users have reported broken third-party plugins such as "Concierge" bookmarks manager, "PithHelmet" ad-blocking software, and "AcidSearch" search enhancement software. It may be possible a reinstall of affected plugins could get them working again, but if not then users will have to wait for an update from the plugin developer to restore functionality.

Beyond plug-ins not working, users have experienced some problems with the update itself, most of which are random crashes of the application.

Apple Discussions poster PatrickL writes: "I made the big mistake of installing Safari 3.2 on Leopard. What a big friggin' mistake. I can barely use it for 30 seconds without it crashing."

In some cases these problems have been resolved by uninstalling Safari plugins, but for the most part, it seems that this problem has to do with a conflict in the new anti-phishing features, which are enabled by default. Users have found that the crashing seems to go away when these features are disabled.

To disable these features, go to Safari's preferences and in the "Security" section turn off the "Warn when visiting a fraudulent website" option. Alternatively, this problem might be due to a preferences file corruption with the new version of Safari not being able to apply the settings stored in the file. As such, users might try removing the "com.apple.Safari.plist" file from the /username/Library/Preferences/ folder and restart the program. Additionally, users might try removing cache files pertaining to Safari, which are located in the /username/Library/Caches/ folder, as well as removing the contents of the /username/Library/Safari/ folder.

Installation problems Lastly, users have had issues with the Safari update not installing: upon running the installer, users may get an error claiming "You cannot install Safari on this volume. This volume already has a newer version of Safari installed." This error may occur if users have had the Safari 4 preview installed at some point. When the preview is installed, several system files get updated with version information about the program, which will prevent Safari 3.2 from being installed even if users remove the application itself. The Safari 4 preview comes with an uninstaller that should correct this version information. However, if the uninstaller will not run because users have removed part of the Safar 4 installation (ie: the program itself), users should be able to reinstall Safari 4 and then run the uninstall program to properly remove it from the system. However, if this does not work users can manually change the system to accept the update by following these steps:

1. Go to the /System/Library/Frameworks/ folder and back up the "Webkit.framework" file to a safe location.
2. Right-click on the framework and choose "Show package contents"
3. Go to the /Versions/A/Resources/ folder and open the "Info.plist" file in a text editor.
4. Locate the keys labeled "CFBundleShortVersionString" and "CFBundleVersion" (do a search for these text strings)
5. Change the value of these keys to a value less than 5525.26 (the version string for the safari 3.2 program).
6. Save the file and close it, and try installing Safari version 3.2 again.

NOTE: While this will enable users to install Safari, there may still be some residual files from the Safari 4 installation that could be incompatible with the Safari 3.2 update. As such, while users can try this method, the cleaner option is to do an archive and install reinstallation of the operating system to clear out these files.

For users who are experiencing extensive problems with the update and wish to uninstall it, the best way to do this is to revert the system to a backup (Time Machine or otherwise) right before the update was applied.

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