Safari "stuck"

Try this:

Empty Safari's cache (from the Safari menu), then close Safari.

Go to Home/Library/Safari and delete the following files:

form values
download.plist

Then go to Home/Library/Preferences and delete

com.apple.Safari.plist

Repair permissions.

Start up Safari again, and things should have improved.

I've been having the same problem with both of my computers. I saw the response recommending deleting "form values and download.plist files", plus deleting "com.apple.Safari.plist from Library Preferences". However, I don't want to this if it will delete all auto-fill, usernames, passwords, etc. that are saved. Will deleting these items lose all those saved items? Others in my office are having the same problem as well. Is there a wider issue that is affecting Safari?

Will deleting these items lose all those saved items?

No.

That could well be the fault of the site i.e. poor programming, something Safari is not too tolerant towards.

Just to eliminate one possible suspect: how much RAM do you have?

That is much too little for Tiger to run properly, and Safari can easily need that all on its own.

You should upgrade to 1GB at least.

If I need to upgrade to 1GB for my desktop, how do I do that?

By purchasing more RAM!

On your case I would go to an Apple dealer and ask them to install it.

Definitely!

I was having a near identical problem but on my Macbook Pro Core2Duo. The beach ball kicked in whenever I tried to do anything and I had to keep force quitting.

I followed the advice above about deleting the .plist files, I also deleted the history.plist file and now Safari seems to be much faster.

Superb advice, Thanks.

Thanks for posting that, much appreciated!