HTML5 is Evil

First, do a full reset of Safari. I've only done it once, so I am telling you this from memory. Click on the gear icon and select Safari reset. Check off all the boxes and click the reset button. That will take Safari back to "out of the box".

If you don't want to reset Safari, look at the plugins installed with Safari. I believe that is found in the menu bar. If you find a dodgy plugin delete it.

Have a nice day.

Boyd

I suspect you are getting a popup from a malicious software downloader that has nothing to do with HTML5.

How is that causing Safari to launch automatically at login?

Download the free application "Pref Setter" and launch it. Enter "login" in the domain search box. Open every item it finds, and search through all the key-value pairs for anything unknown.

First, do a full reset of Safari.

How will a full reset of Safari stop it from launching automatically?

Try clicking the Edit button in the lower left corner, then delete the offending site. I think the reset is probably a good idea too. That would certainly take care of it.

It isn't clear that Safari is launching. It may just be the PubSubAgent. As more and more sites start to adopt HTML5, we may see this problem more and more as they aren't careful about how much data they try to stuff in that database.

It isn't clear that Safari is launching.

I can only go by this, from the OP: "Whenever I log on to my Mac, Safari automatically opens..."

Philly_Phan wrote:

The relationship between my "disallow" of the HTML5 database and the resulting downloading of the application software.

Are you saying that you have set the "Database Storage" value to "None" 'before asking'? If that is the case, then everything is working normally. The site wants to store some HTML5 data, is allowed to do so automatically, and so asks you.

HTML5 databases can be thought of as cookies on steroids. They can be used for some really cool new features, but it is unlikely anyone has gotten around to doing that yet.

No application software is being downloaded. I suggest setting this value back to the 5 MB default and seeing if the problem continues. Then, remove that site from your "top sites" and history. Reset Safari will do that and get rid of it - and everything else too.

Just to make sure I'm following along correctly, when you go into System Preferences -> Accounts then select your account and the click on Login Items, what do you have listed in there (both checked and unchecked)? What about for the other users?

It isn't clear that Safari has been configured to launch automatically. My theory is that the original poster has turn off the database storage, the PubSubAgent queries the site, which wants storage, and PubSubAgent launches Safari to ask for said storage. Yes, it is convoluted, but it's my best guess.

If that's true, then Safari should launch not only at login, but whenever his RSS feeds are updated. If Safari is already running when the feeds are updated, then whatever it's doing at launch should also happen then.