Safari is lagging terribly when trying to scroll PDF files. This makes scrolling a PDF file very difficult using two-finger scroll commands on the trackpad. Scrolling works quite well for everything else, so it is obvious the problem is being caused by Safari and is unique to PDF files.
MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)
There is a forum just for Safari.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/safari
http://www.apple.com/support/safari
MacBook Series Forums
https://discussions.apple.com/community/notebooks?view=discussions
http://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro
Hold Sift key and launch Safari
Reset Safari
Delete site preview, top sites, cache, history and bookmarks cache
Reboot the computer with Shift key down - Safe Mode
Boot into ML Recovery mode - Command + r and run Repair Disk
General purpose Mac troubleshooting guide:
Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107393
What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? (Mac OS X) - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564
Creating a temporary user to isolate user-specific problems:
Isolating an issue by using another user account
Identifying resource hogs and other tips:
Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used
Starting the computer in "safe mode":
Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?
To identify potential hardware problems:
General Mac maintenance:
Tips to keep your Mac in top form
Direct you to the proper forum for MacBook :
Back up all data.
Triple-click the line of text below to select it, the copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C):
/Library/Internet Plug-ins
In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder
from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-G. Paste into the text box that opens (command-V), then press return.
From the folder that opens, remove any items that have "Adobe" or “PDF” in the name. You may be prompted for your login password. Then quit and relaunch Safari, and test.
The "Silverlight" web plugin distributed by Microsoft can also interfere with PDF display in Safari, so you may need to remove it as well, if it's present.
If you still have the issue, repeat with this line:
~/Library/Internet Plug-ins
If you don’t like the results of this procedure, restore the items from the backup you made before you started. Relaunch Safari again.
Linc: Thank you so very much! You are, indeed, the Man. That worked perfectly. I did not have to remove Silverlight or go to ~/Library/Internet Plug-ins either. I just removed the following:
Thank you very much! This worked like a charm! Stupid Adobe plugins!
Hey Linc wondering if you have any other suggestions. I have tried all of the above but the result is that the pdf document doesn't even open in safari anymore -- all I get is a window with gibberish in it (see screenshot).
So, after disabling the Adobe plugins in the library folders, I can't manage to open any pdf's in Safari. The only way I can get the function back is to put the adobe plugins back into the library folders.
This has me stumped. I would really like to only use preview because of the scrolling problem.
Any help appreciated.
Tom
PS:
BTW Adobe itself suggests the same method of disabling Reader as the preferred app in Safari: http://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/display-pdf-browser-acrobat-xi.html
Adobe also acknowledges, very unwillingly, that their scrolling in Safari is s***: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1225213?start=40&tstart=0
safari's responsiveness to scrolling commands very poor when displaying pdf files.
