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Spliff · Mar 28, 2004, 09:12 PM

What's going on with Safari? With each release, it's gotten slower and slower when tying a message to post on a forum board like MacNN forums. Right now, as I type, is using 70% CPU and the character are lagging behind the actual keystrokes.

Anyone know what's causing this and if there is a way to fix it? Or is it a flaw within Safari itself?

f1000 · Mar 28, 2004, 09:13 PM

Yeah, I noticed this too. Restart Safari.

Love Calm Quiet · Mar 28, 2004, 09:18 PM

Try adjusting your window size so that the animated gifs for the emoticons aren't visible. They suck cpu cycles like crazy. (PithHelmet can block them ).

Aside: can anybody explain what Apple has done to make Safari so sensitive to gif activity?

zachs · Mar 28, 2004, 09:19 PM

Get pithHelmet to disable animated GIFs.

Spliff · Mar 28, 2004, 09:27 PM

Originally posted by zachs:
Get pithHelmet to disable animated GIFs.

You've got to be kidding? Safari can't handle animated gifs?!?! How lame is that. Time to click the little bug button.

WJMoore · Mar 29, 2004, 03:52 AM

In older versions of Safari it would only animate one instance of the same image if it appeared multiple times. This was fixed in the Safari that came with Panther (can't remember the version number) however it introduced a bug where if there are a lot of animated GIF on a webpage it sucks a lot of CPU time. As a result the typing response goes through the floor. Give it time, I'm sure it will be fixed sooner or later. Keep an eye on Dave Hyatt's WebLog for upcoming Safari bug fixes.

Apfhex · Mar 29, 2004, 04:06 AM

Apple sure seems to have a hard time with animated GIFs. iChat has a similar bug where it will take 80-90% CPU if someone on your list has an animated icon...

I hope this is fixed sometime (though right now, the Smilies down below the reply box aren't slowing me down at all).

Since EBCDIC · Mar 30, 2004, 12:05 AM

Problem: Since upgrading to 10.3.3 I've noticed Safari 1.2.1 is getting slow upon page loads, almost always giving me the beachball until a page is completely loaded. A major change from the rather speedy browser I'd seen until recently.

This MacOSXHints thread describes a solution: "Over time, Safari stores more and more info in your user's Library/Safari folder. Even though you can "reset" Safari, this doesn't clean up everything. In my case, the offending garbage was the "Icons" folder that stores every favicon you have ever come across. I manually deleted this folder, which removed hundreds of files and folders from my machine and Safari. Once they were trashed, Safari was back to it's old speedy self."

Also shown is a command to take care of the problem, and one which might be added to your crontab:

find $HOME/Library/Safari/Icons -type f -atime +30 -name "*.cache" -delete

Also noted: if you set the Icon folder to 'READ ONLY' it keeps Safari from saving those files.

hyatt · Mar 30, 2004, 12:31 AM

I was able to reproduce the animated GIF slowdown just now. Weird. It doesn't happen on a fresh launch of Safari (going right to the reply page). I had to reload and go back/forward a few times, and then it got triggered. Maybe a particular ad at the top is causing the trouble? I'll look into it.

Spliff · 03:58 AM

Originally posted by hyatt:
I was able to reproduce the animated GIF slowdown just now. Weird. It doesn't happen on a fresh launch of Safari (going right to the reply page). I had to reload and go back/forward a few times, and then it got triggered. Maybe a particular ad at the top is causing the trouble? I'll look into it.

Well, I cleaned out my Safari icon cache and things have definitely speeded up.

But the banner ad theory is a good one. I'll keep my eye on the ad banners when I post at various forums, including this one. If I notice a pattern, I'll send it in.

Slightly off-topic. With all these Mac browser, I find myself frustrated with the choice. There are things I like about Safari, Firefox, Mozilla, Omniweb, and Chimera. I want to use them all, damnit. I guess I'll have to keep alternating.

Since EBCDIC · Mar 30, 2004, 11:56 AM

Well, my decision has gone something like this:

Safari has the nicest UI and (until recently) great performance. And it's sanctioned by Apple.

Firefox is my backup, for the few websites which Safari can't do.

OmniWeb, for which I paid, is nice, but with back-and-forth bookmark interoperability with Safari, it's just not worth it (to me), even though it has some bitchin' bells and whistles. That having been said, I just might try it again. Those guys are *good*. :-)