Safari on Leopard rendering pages slowly

[rp2000]

Hi,

Today I gave away my Mac Mini with Tiger loaded. I reformatted and did clean install last night to give to mate at work (not used the machine myself for ages). I set it up for him and hi wifis to an ADSL router at work and so do I. His Safari renders pages faster than mine. I thought work ADSL is slow, but it renders faster than my fast broadband connection at home (implying software not network problems).

Now I am really conscious of the 2 sec delay before loading my homepage.

so a 1.83ghz core duo with Tiger is faster than my current gen 2.5ghz MBP (both full software update), and also I come home and try out my Firefox (2.014) in my XP VM (Vmware), and that loads pages faster than Safari!! (Hadn't ever used 2 browsers in tandem like that to notice the issue!!

Finally I turn off the VM and compare my FF 2.014 on Leopard to Safari, and, you guessed it, it beats my Safari as well!

I did think I spotted this a few weeks back, but as I use same machine everyday to browse I had no tests to prove it was my machine and not ADSL. The new ADSL line and mac mini on same line proves otherwise.

I recall being visually impressed with rendering speed when the machine was new. I have added a couple of add-ons to Safari (from pimpmysafari) nothing major that should cause this (imo), like an AD blocker, Flash blocker etc.

I am relatively new to Mac OS X, but I know more than enough about networking to know it is not an ISP/router etc issue.

Any ideas what I can do to restore Safari to being "virgin" and using no add-ons etc without a reinstall? (The reinstall of Tiger was painful at near the 2 hour mark, can only imagine Leopard is worse).


rp2000

 

[rp2000]

I get a pause too with Safari 3.1.1 on 10.5.3 although I'm tempted to try the Safari 4 beta..

Interesting...

I assume it is like me, a 1-2 sec delay to load my homepage (http://google.co.uk/ig) and common pages like BBC news, facebook etc take a few secs after clicking the bookmark. I also notice it when I go back and forward in sites (slightly).

Is anyone with Leopard able to test if they have FF and Safari on the same machine? I am happy to do a are-install if others can say they don't have this issue. I have a mate with the same MBP as me (identical hardware config, bought 1 month apart) to test, when I get a chance over next few days.

Now I know the problem is not my internet connection I am annoyed (moreso if it's an addon or setting I have changed myself inadvertently!!)


rp2000

 

[rp2000]

You could "Reset Safari" from the Safari Menu (although that will only clear caches etc)

You'd have to visit Pimpmysafari to see how to uninstall the add-ons. It sounds like they're bogging it down quite badly (Especially if you've installed the Safari 3.1 updates). I use Safari AND Firefox 3 and both run about the same speed on my Mac.

Hi EVH,

yes I will do an install of FF3 later. Problem is (my own fault really) some add-ons leave visible traces like an extra panel in Safari Prefs, others don't so I have no way to recall exactly what I added. At the time I was on a mission to give up on FF so was looking for add-ons that replicate my FF setup. So I probably installed and uninstalled a few maybe in a messy way that left crap behind?

Sadly I think a clean install is my only option to eradicate all issues, although I would want my settings restored, and that in itself could re-instate my problem!!!

Edit: I definitely have something called Safari Block (like adblock for FF) installed (but disabled atm but didn't help) and also I have a setting called "Right Click Flash" which I dunno is default or something I added. My fear is I added some sort of "framework" that some apps on pimpmysafari wanted? Something like that could cause an underlying issue (guessing based on my knowledge of Windows).


rp2000

 

[rp2000]

Doesn't take 15 minutes to reinstall the OS. Surely the fun lies behind re-configuring everything.

It'll ultimately be quicker than restoring, as it would garauntee a fresh slate / problem-free setup

15 mins you say?

Tiger on the mac mini took 2 hours and involved swapping 2 dvds, of which I am pretty sure it copied the bulk of the data to the HDD which in itself would take more than 15 minutes to copy that much data from 2 DVDs to a HDD.

Leopard had 2 disks (I assume I can opt not to install some crap like GarageBand, maybe negating need for disk 2) but I still doubt it would take 15 mins (although you are the expert ).

If I backup my bookmarks and documents and my 20GB VM I am happy to forego all else tbh.

As you say the fun is in reconfiguring and I have not configured a great deal yet as I am still learning, which is why I am ****** off that I managed to knacker Safari.


rp2000

 

[rp2000]

Just an update, Safari is lightening quick now. I killed a couple of processes that began "google....." and it is now fast again. I done a reboot (which is rare as I mainly Sleep the MBP) and those processes are not back and Safaris is super quick again.

Weird.


rp2000