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Spliff · Apr 14, 2005, 06:29 PM

Lately, Safari has been incorrectly rendering text on webpages. Deleting the Safari prefs, cache, icons, etc hasn't fixed the problem. Anyone know what's causing this?

Chuckit · Apr 14, 2005, 07:23 PM

Scrolling the text off the screen doesn't do anything for it? This looks like a redraw bug (i.e. copying the pixels to the wrong place) to me.

Spliff · Apr 14, 2005, 08:30 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Scrolling the text off the screen doesn't do anything for it? This looks like a redraw bug (i.e. copying the pixels to the wrong place) to me.

Scrolling it off the page or selecting the text corrects it. Any idea what's causing it or how to fix it?

I'm running 10.3.8.

TheIceMan · Apr 14, 2005, 08:36 PM

I get the quite often actually. When I scroll up/down really fast it happens. I've sent in many bug reports to Apple about this. Anyone else chime in on whether or not this has been fixed in Safari 2.0?

MacNNblueberry · 02:31 PM

(double post)

MacNNblueberry · Apr 26, 2005, 02:24 PM

I am getting the same problem -- have been for the last couple of weeks. Scrolling full screens (by pressing the space bar or COMMAND-down) is okay, but if I tap, tap, tap the down key, I get the images/text overlapping. It's damn annoying.
I'd love to hear of a fix.

(I'm on a "Late 2001" G3 iBook running 10.3.9 with 640Mb of RAM)

Chuckit · Apr 26, 2005, 02:40 PM

Really? I haven't seen this problem on 1.3 yet. I figured it was fixed. Too bad.

By the way, as for what causes it, it seems to happen almost exclusively on slow hardware. I'm guessing that the redraw is somehow being done using timers, which are firing too late on slower computers. (This isn't anything resembling fact. I'm just guessing why only older machines seem to be affected.)

Spliff · Apr 26, 2005, 03:49 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Really? I haven't seen this problem on 1.3 yet. I figured it was fixed. Too bad.

By the way, as for what causes it, it seems to happen almost exclusively on slow hardware. I'm guessing that the redraw is somehow being done using timers, which are firing too late on slower computers. (This isn't anything resembling fact. I'm just guessing why only older machines seem to be affected.)

I've got a slow machine. Thing is, this problem only appeared recently, under 10.3.8. Maybe changes in the OS are responsible.

I might try creating a new, virgin user account to see if the redraw problem occurs there.

MacNNblueberry · May 5, 2005, 03:08 AM

Yeah, I started having this problem only a few weeks ago. I thought perhaps 10.3.9 might fix it, but it didn't. Maybe Tiger will.

MacNNblueberry · May 5, 2005, 10:33 AM

And thanks for the tip about trying another user account. I'll try that and see if it helps.

NYCFarmboy · May 5, 2005, 01:34 PM

Also having the same problem .... it is annoying... especially on webpages with lots of photographs the text gets placed over the image... very annoying.

MacNNblueberry · May 5, 2005, 02:32 PM

I've noticed that I seem to get it mostly (if not all) in a two-inch square right in the middle of either the screen or the window. Most annoying... I'm wondering if Tiger's Safari 2.0 will fix it or not.

TheIceMan · May 5, 2005, 08:53 PM

I'm still getting this on Safari 1.3. In fact, I think it's worse now than before when I ws on Safari 1.2.4. Can someone on Safari 2.0 chime in on this? Does this problem still occur under Tiger & Safari 2.0?

MacNNblueberry · 09:39 AM

Hmm, when using a new account Safari seems to work flawlessly, although all of my bookmarks are in my other account so I'm not really testing Safari under the normal load (usually I have like 30-40 tabs open). So, I'm not sure if it's a memory problem (as in, normally I am using way too much memory), or if it's something like the Safari add-on Saft or one of my other system add-ons (APE, JetClock, Growl, et cetera) that's causing the trouble... or if it's just a bad case of my normal account having bad prefs somewhere.

So, if I've figured that a new account is good, how do I go about cleaning my normal account? Can I just trash certain pref files? Or do I try to configure my "new" account so it's like the old one?

MacNNblueberry · May 30, 2005, 01:21 PM

I have recently found that I'm not getting this as much after having turned off "Sidenote" (Sidenote is a little pop-up text app) as a start-up item. This may be entirely un-related.

cryer · Sep 16, 2005, 10:39 PM

ive been talking with TheIceMan about this issue for the past couple days and we both thought it would be wise to post about it here. i'm experiencing similar problems with safari rendering text and graphics unevenly and just plain screwy... this mostly occurs when i'm scrolling down or up through a webpage, it just all of a sudden looks screwy and if i scroll just a tiny bit down, it looks normal again

i'm running safari version 1.3.1 (v312.3)
os x panther version 10.3.9
the only plug-in i have installed for safari is safari stand (1.3)

MacNNblueberry's suggestion of turning sidenote off seems to have improved things a bit but this rendering problem is still occurring albeit somewhat less.

here are screenshots of what i'm talking about:

http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/1748/picture16lr.jpg
http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/8605/picture22qu.jpg
http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/6723/picture74aj.jpg
http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/3863/picture85fo.jpg
http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/5...cture103rx.jpg
http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/6...cture119xi.jpg
http://img379.imageshack.us/img379/9...cture120ho.jpg

anyone else experience this? or have any tips or suggestions? or ideally, a fix?

MacNNblueberry · Sep 19, 2005, 06:27 AM

I don't think I've run into this problem since I updated to Tiger (with Safari 2.0).
I don't use Sidenote anymore either though.

cryer · Sep 19, 2005, 05:29 PM

so does this mean that everyone using panther has this problem with safari?

MacNNblueberry · Sep 21, 2005, 04:37 AM

I'm guessing that it was just people using certain machines and/or with certain software installed... if it had been everyone there would've been an outcry and you couldn't Google "Safari" without it being talked about everywhere.

cryer · Sep 21, 2005, 05:39 PM

hmm but what software? like i said, i've only been using safari stand as a plugin for safari, nothing else.
i know this happens on pc's (windows) so i dunno if its an issue on macs, but certain software can affect or conflict with other software on mac os x? sidenote for example.. how could that piece of software be affecting the rendering of text & graphics in a web browser? i could see if it was something like a plugin or some software that used safari.. but an app that doesn't do any web-related activity?

i also have 1.5 gb of ram, so im not so sure its some kind of low memory thing

any idea how i can find out what's causing it and put a stop to it?

MacNNblueberry · Sep 23, 2005, 06:19 AM

The only thing I noticed about Sidenote was that it popped up something in the center of my screen, and it was this same sized square of my screen that ran into trouble with Safari. Then I was also getting this thing in Safari where I'd scroll down, but like parts of the Safari window would scroll over each other or something. I'd have to click in the scroll bar drop down a full screen and then click again to go back up a whole screen to get it to redraw right.

Maybe it has something to do with machines (like mine, a G3/600 "Late 2001" iBook) that lack the capability of those nifty Quartz graphics...

All I know is that it is definitely a non-issue in Safari 2.0 that comes with Tiger.

cryer · Sep 23, 2005, 12:09 PM

i have the latest revision of the powerbook, 17" 1.67 ghz so i dont think it has to do with quartz graphics
damn this is really annoying, im not sure when this problem started happening but its been like this for a long while now. i seem to be having worse problems than what you've experienced, if you take a look at the screenshots. its more than just a square section and overlapping graphics. for me, text and graphics go haywire across the screen, appearing to be random, whenever i scroll (occasionally but often enough and persistent enough to warrant a problem)

i'd like to upgrade to tiger but i haven't really found a compelling enough reason to justify the cost but maybe this is what will make me do it. but thats kind of a waste if i can just fix it on panther, which shouldn't be impossible.. someone? anyone? help please

thanks for all the replies, mac. i very much appreciate it
if you have any other suggestions/opinions/advice, i'd be glad to hear it
if anyone else has this problem please don't hesitate to post here

osxrules · Sep 23, 2005, 05:52 PM

Nah, I have Tiger and Safari 2 still does it sometimes.

In fact, this bug now appears in the Finder, which I don't remember in Panther.

I don't mind since it gets fixed with a window redraw. The Finder bug is actually worse than the Safari one because sometimes I have to go up a folder in column view and then down again to correct it.

I still think Tiger is well worth the upgrade though. Safari can now save websites as archives so it keeps the media. Also it seems to work better with gif animations though curiously, some pretty static pages make the CPU max out.

cryer · Sep 24, 2005, 02:04 AM

in the finder!?

this must be a pretty big bug, i dont understand how this kind of problem slips past apple
i do use safari 95% of the time so i admit i haven't had sufficient enough time to see if this happens with firefox or any other browser.

is there no solution??