Peter Cooper

Safari 3.1 and Gmail: Unusable?

Not a very exciting post this, but I just did the latest Apple Software Update to Safari 3.1 and.. Gmail is now totally unusable. Whenever you press Shift or Cmd while in the main composition window, it jumps the focus to whichever previous text box you used. Sometimes if you use Cmd+A to select all of the text in the e-mail, you end up with the whole page getting highlighted and selected instead. Naturally, I’m unable to type any capital letters in my mails either, since pressing Shift sends you off somewhere else.

I’m really hoping this is something specific to my install, but I have nothing wacky installed, and Gmail works fine in other browsers (even other Google services seem to be okay - Calendar is fine for example.) The trouble seems to be constrained to the “rich text” view, with the regular text boxes working okay. If you switch from using a rich text composition style to “plain text” then that also works okay.

Update 1

On the plus side, this has forced me to give Firefox 3 Beta 4 a go, and.. it’s really good! It’s a real leap forward for Firefox on OS X. So, heck, I might just switch to Firefox and leave Safari to sort itself out (or Google, who might well be at fault here.)

Update 2 - I’m sticking with Firefox 3!

Okay, after an hour of use, I want to thank Apple and Google! Firefox 3 is so much better than Safari (and Firefox 2) that I’m going to stick with it full-time. It uses less memory than Safari, feels a lot faster, has a nicer interface, supports multiple search engines, and currently gets my thumbs up as the best browser of the moment. I can’t believe it feels faster than Safari, but there you go.

Update 3 - Lots of other people are having the same issue

There are already other references to this problem online. Firstly, at the Apple Discussion boards. There’s also a reference here and a video demonstrating the problems here.

I am running into the same problem and it’s driving me nuts, at least I’m not alone.

You guys aren’t alone, I’ve always been having trouble with Safari + Gmail (even pre Safari 3.1).

Check out the comments for that post of mine: http://sahild.com/post/28677692, i link to the official bug report. Thanks for linking!

Peter, have you tried using a site specific browser for Gmail? Mailplane for OS X gets my vote.

I did briefly (as in, for a day) but eventually found I was just using my regular browser anyway. I have my browser open all the time, so it makes sense to use it.

Glad you like Firefox 3, Peter. We’ve been working hard to convince OSX users that we’re as interested in having them as users as they are in having us on their computers.

Oh, and if you’re into site-specific browsers, you might want to try the latest version of Prism (which is basically a site-specific Firefox).

Peter,

Personally i have been using Safari 3.1, and have had no notable problems. Well…. actually, that is stretching the truth a bit.

In fact, i quite often find that Safari decides to hang with the spinning beach ball, and if i am even more unlucky, it crashes.

So i’m going to be looking to use Firefox 3 more, as i simply cannot put up with the crashathons i have been having recently (even considering that 3.1 implements a load of cool new HTML features).

~ James

Give Flock a try. The latest version has a specific integration with gmail:

http://webworkerdaily.com/2008/03/12/flocks-new-version-gmail-integration-may-attract-web-workers/

Granted not as fast as webkit, but Flock is one of those browsers that grows on you. Plus, as its based on FF, you can (mostly) use the same plugins (I can’t live without firebug).

Thanks Peter, I was about to switch from Firefox to Safari because its said to be faster.

I use Firefox with Cooliris and I find it indispensable. Thanks for saving me a lot of wasted effort.

Hi,

Just to let you all know I’ve been experiencing this issue since day one, and having logged into gmail today…it works!!

A quick look at the bottom reveals copyright 2008 Google.

Yesterday it said 2007, so by my understanding I am now running the new version complete with capital letters!!

Give yours a go

J.

As an Aussie, I’d been using Safari with Gmail language set as “English (UK)”. With the Safari 3.1 update, Gmail was unusable (eg. no formatting bar).

To fix the issue, all I did was change the language setting to “English (US)” and voila, problem fixed. As a bonus I now get updated Gmail (2008) interface!

(Stick with Safari - might not be very customisable but it it FAST)

Mailplane gets my vote any day. It seriously has increased my productivity by 10x. I actually ended up just buying the full software.

P.S. The drag and drop features and custom hot keys are delicious.

http://mailplaneapp.com/