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Safari is NOT frozen, can click on page, but will not show as topmost app

I have a recurring problem with Safari 3.1.2 in 10.5.4. One that I cannot re-create at will.

I typically have many pages with many tabs each. Every once in a while, pages will not correctly respond to being clicked on. The page comes to the front, but Safari does not show as the front-most application. I cannot select and activate it via the Dock or by command-shift-tabbing. Movies may continue to play in a page, so it's not frozen, by any means.

Also, ActivityMonitor does NOT show it as locked up or frozen, nor is it consuming crazy amounts of RAM or CPU cycles. There is free RAM available.

Anyone have any ideas?

MBP 17 2.4 ghz 4 gig, Mac OS X (10.5.4), Pretty stock, swapped HD to a 320

Posted on Oct 29, 2008 1:59 PM

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10 replies

Oct 30, 2008 8:57 AM in response to Eaglepeak

What are the side effects of deleting that .plist file? What am I losing/resetting?

I can't close Safari, except by force-quitting. Usually, if I restart it and restore the pages from the previous session, things work fine. So it's not just the combination of pages, but some timing, it seems.

Reproducing - have been trying, but if you have 5 or 10 pages with 3-10 tabs in some of them, recreating is a bit of a challenge. But it's not as though I don't want to!

I upgraded to 10.5.5 last night. Maybe that will have an impact!?!?!

Oct 30, 2008 9:07 AM in response to nashman

The plist files contains your application's preferences. You will lose those by deleting it and emptying the trash.
If you just trash the plist file but don't empty the trash you can always restore it to its original location.

After relaunching safari a new plist file is created.
These plist files may get corrupted, and thus may cause unexpected results, that is what I'm trying to find out with you.

Oct 30, 2008 9:12 AM in response to Eaglepeak

Given that I've just upgraded to 10.5.5 last night, I'm going to avoid making other changes, else I won't be able to determine which change has caused the problem to go away.

So far, I've not had a reoccurrence, but can't say if it's coincidence, or 10.5.5. Even before, I've gone days without the problem appearing, so it's premature to say it's been eliminated.

Oct 30, 2008 3:32 PM in response to Cubey

Typically LOTS of things open - at any given time, I'll have Mail, Cisco VPN client, Preview, Terminal, BrowseBack, iCal, System Preferences, Camino, SpamSieve, all open. Add in PowerPoint, QuickSilver, DefaultFolderX, and PathFinder, and that's a fair representation of what I'll be running.

So it does make it a bit difficult to re-create what the circumstances may be that caused the problem!

Oct 30, 2008 5:38 PM in response to nashman

Ha, doesn't help to narrow it down does it! I'm in a similar position with apps open so I understand the randomness of it happening.

At one stage I thought it might be a javascript overload things happening, but it actually hasn't happened in a while, but I will keep in mind and if I think of something I'll reply accordingly.

Safari is NOT frozen, can click on page, but will not show as topmost app

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