Mac OS X 10.4.11 Safari Crash
If you’re running the newly-released Mac OS X 10.4.11 update & are having lots of crashes in Safari, then the likely culprit is going to be items in your ~/Library/InputManagers/ path. Some popular Input Managers include:
- Application enhancer SIMBL
- Safari enhancer Saft
- X/HTML validator SafariTidy
- TextMate bundle “Edit in TextMate”
- The Safari plugin for the password manager 1Password
SafariTidy was the culprit for me. The developer, Kasper Nauwelaerts, has upgraded this to 0.2.4. I’ve not yet been able to successfully install the update, however—Safari just isn’t recognising its existence.
Input Managers act as a patch to the applications for which they’re intended, and as such are unsupported—even actively discouraged—by Apple, because they can patch applications in dangerous ways. Those of us who rely upon such items—as I am to Safari Tidy, so I can validate my work on-the-fly—are in something of a quandary. As Daring Fireball’s John Gruber implied regarding input managers and unsupported software, this situation isn’t going to get better but worse as time passes.
SafariTidy’s useful validation features: how can it be made a better OS X citizen?
Because the use of the InputManager system is so bad, I’m left wondering what’s the best recourse. Tidy is really useful & there are extensions for Firefox, but none are to my mind as elegant as SafariTidy. I’m left hoping that Kasper will port his plugin to a different architecture…
Update: I just got some tips from Kasper & some very good news:
…You should put [SafariTidy] in the SIMBL plugins folder, which usually resides in ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/.
Please remove all traces in any InputManagers folder you put the bundle, as this plugin isn’t technically an InputManager (anymore).
Three cheers for Kasper! I’ll be donating to him right now.
Update 2 (03/03/09): for those using the new Safari 4 beta, you’ll want to upgrade to the latest SafariTidy.