Filed under: Software, WWDC, Beta Beat
More on rolling back from Safari 3 Beta
For a few unfortunate folks (remember, everyone, 'beta' means 'may do you wrong') the Safari 3 Beta installation has gone seriously off the rails. Inability to run the browser, inability to run other Apple apps that depend on WebKit... here there be dragons. If you can't run the bundled uninstaller mentioned earlier, you might take some comfort from this thread at Apple Discussions which indicates that the original WebKit and JavaScript frameworks, along with the Safari 2 app, are stowed away in /Library/Application Support/Apple/.SafariBetaArchive.tar.gz (the leading . means the file won't show up by default in the Finder, but you can get at it from Terminal). Check out the posts for suggestions on how to roll back gracefully.Thanks Scottie & others who sent this in
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Ron said 12:33AM on 6-12-2007
Keep in mind that you can possibly avoid this issue.
If the installer seems to have hung early in the process of installing, move the installer window out of the way, there may be an authentication dialog box there waiting for your input underneath the other window.
If you happen to force quit the installer, you will be left in a state where you can't run ANY installers, Safari is missing, and you can't run Apple Mail.
Unless you have another email program or web browser, you are pretty much stuck without a cyberspace lifeline for help...
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Simon Arch said 11:05PM on 6-11-2007
Well, I didn't have any problems with the uninstaller (thank God) but Safari 3 failed to work. Sans Internet, it would crash on launch. With the connection in place, it would load, but fail to show a single thing-and then crash. Ooops. Guess I'll wait for the 3.0.1 release. :)
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Phil said 8:08AM on 6-12-2007
I had this issue. The installer hung and aperture, onyx, safari, mail and more refused to run afterwards. The installers wouldn't even run.
I used another machine to reinstall the 10.4.9 update via target disc mode and that got me going again.
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Catatonic said 11:48PM on 6-11-2007
The installation of Safari 3 Beta on my Powerbook worked fine for me, but it broke iTunes, as mentioned in the discussions linked above. I was able to uninstall the Beta, but that didn't restore iTunes. I can play my music, I just can't see it or browse it. I also tried uninstalling Uno and restarting, but that didn't help. If anyone has any ideas on how to fix rendering in iTunes, please let me know!!
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Joshua Ochs said 11:56PM on 6-11-2007
So far, almost every problem report has been one of two things:
1) InputManager hacks causing problems (PithHelmet, Chax, etc)
2) Minor issues with the new WebKit (Colloquy, Mail)
All of the crashers are due to InputManager hacks. These things are injecting code into your applications - they're just a disaster waiting to happen. If you need features not in Safari or iChat, do yourself a favor and use Firefox or Adium. Personally, I hope the whole InputManager thing is closed off for good, for security, stability, and supportability.
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Catatonic said 11:50PM on 6-11-2007
Follow up to my post above: the Safari 2/Webkit backup /Library/Application Support/Apple/.SafariBetaArchive.tar.gz was removed after I ran the Safari 3 Beta uninstall, so I don't have any way of getting back to my original Webkit files. Major suckage.
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Scott Johnson said 12:27AM on 6-12-2007
My experimenting seems to point to problems with programs/add-ons that use an input manager (Safari Plus, Safari Stand, etc...) After removing them from (user)/Library/InputManagers, all seems to be well. YMMV.
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Ron said 2:52AM on 6-12-2007
By the way, I don't have any Safari add-ons or input managers on my system, and I had the problem.
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JaXX said 12:55AM on 6-12-2007
@Simon...
To be precise, I don't think you'll wait 'til 3.0.1 ... you'll wait 3.0.0 non-beta.
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Mephistophelian said 1:17AM on 6-12-2007
After watching this debacle develop all day and after making sure I had a backup browser on hand I went to install the beta.
When I get to the authentication pop up where I have to enter my password to proceed I get the spinning beach ball and it wont go away but I can back out of the install.
I am not comfortable proceeding any further and will be waiting until the next release.
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james said 1:59PM on 6-12-2007
i wasn't able to install S 3.0 beta on my 12" powerbook g4, kept saying i needed 47.2 mb of space on my drive, i have 9 gigs free. very odd.
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peter said 2:00AM on 6-12-2007
Just installed v3 on a Dual G5 Mac and it won't load any webpage. Just sits on loading. I have NO weird third-party stuff running. Now I get to restart again and hope the uninstall works.
What's kinda sad is the fact I've been running Safari 3 on a Windows XP box all day and it's been rock solid. And the Windows version doesn't require ANY restart, unlike the Mac one that's forced 2 on me now.
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blip said 4:10AM on 6-12-2007
Got the "hangs on install" problem and had to replace the missing frameworks but when OmniWeb crashed on me a couple of times on a page I wanted to access I tried the Safari 3 Beta again and this time I *WAITED* on the 5-10% where I thought the installer was hangning. Listening closely the HD was spinning during what I initially thought to be a hung up installer. A minute of two later it puffed on to finish the install. Could be that installer was removing/backing up Safari 2 and the framworks files at that time, having not yet replaced them with the new ones.
My confirm/password window was never hidden, though.
Now, I'm writing this in Safari 3 and haven't found any problems *yet* (knock on wood). If anything severe doesn't happen I'll keep this as it's loads faster on my old G4 iBook compared to Safari 2 (I get the buttery smooth scrolling I previously only had in OmniWeb with Safari 3 and changing between tabs is only a split second - an area where OmniWeb suffered from a great deal of lag on my lowly comp).
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Marcus Taylor said 8:58AM on 6-12-2007
Just uninstalled...
Surprised Apple released a piece of dump like that. All my other browsers (Camino, Firefox etc.) loaded pages, but not Safari 3. Thought my DSL had gone down for while there...
Thank goodness there's an uninstaller!
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kingshaun1 said 8:03AM on 6-12-2007
I must say i haven't had any problems so far, for that matter it has solved a problem that i've been having. I listen to this radio station in the morning, and i couldn't find a browser on the mac side that would allow me to listen without having to refresh. Well this morning i got up and i'm been listening for the past two hours and no refreshing so far.
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artifex said 9:22AM on 6-12-2007
Slashdot also reports several vulnerabilities found already...
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Jason said 9:35AM on 6-12-2007
Is it possible that people who aren't having any problems just can't be bothered to comment? I'm writing this comment from the safari beta, no problems whatsoever.
I still, however, find the lack of firefox-like "shortcuts" too much to bear, like double-clicking the tab bar for a new tab (should I really need to right-click, or use the keyboard for that?) and although you can click the EDGE of the address bar to select the entire URL, it usually takes more than one try, and being able to hit ESC is much simpler.
There are probably scripts or input managers (maybe not any longer?) that I could use to fix these muscle-memory shortcuts, but seeing as EVERYONE using safari was at some point a switcher from IE or firefox, just the option would be nice. Go ahead, bury it DEEP in the preferences, I won't mind!!!
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Joon Kang said 9:47AM on 6-12-2007
Safari 3 Beta seems to be working fine on my PC, Windows XP, I just have problems with the Korean character encoding.
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Mark said 11:55PM on 6-12-2007
I had nothing but trouble with safari 3 beta on 10.4.9. Although I was using safari stand, and in retrospect I should have uninstalled it. But all of my crashes came from trying to access bookmarks. Futher oddities came in the form of having to double load every page in order to get them to display. Oh well back to safari 2 for me.
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Mark Noble said 9:54AM on 6-12-2007
Wouldn't it be great if the preferences in the new Safari version included an input field for ZIP code? I use a customized iGoogle home page now and that makes me think about how much web content includes "localized" features. Wouldn't the next evolutionary browser step need to address this functionality in current browser design?
By the way, I've installed Safari 3 beta on my desktop G5 and my MacBookPro with no problems so far. I do have other browsers already loaded just in case.
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