Pop-ups, pop-unders causing Safari to crash

In the midst of our coverage of a growing issue where Web advertisement pop-ups or pop-unders more frequently infiltrate browsers' built-in blocking mechanisms we noted a separate issue where pop-ups and pop-unders delivered by certain sites can cause Safari to crash in a reproducible fashion.

We've since received a number of confirmations for this issue, particularly regarding two popular sites: CBS.SportsLine.com and PGATour.com.

Michael McKinney writes "I have also encountered problems with Safari and cbssportsline.com. I can go to the main page but as soon as I try and go somewhere else on the site Safari crashes. I use Camino when going to the cbssportsline site and haven 't had any problems."

Another reader adds:

"I've had the same problem as Barry Maggert with CBSSportsline.com for a while now. I just don't visit the site any more, even though I used to visit often. It would look like the page had loaded fine, but then totally dump out and crash. I never considered pop-unders, but it makes sense to me now that I read it."

For now, the best solution for this issue appears to be using an alternate browser not based on the same engine as Safari, such as Firefox or Camino.

Resources