Safari crashing with gmail: new event since Sept 2011

Question

Safari repeatedly crashes when Igoogle (has access to gmail) or gmail is signed in.
I have tried:
Installing security updates for safari
Clearing the cache
Clearing history
Clearing the keychain and updating passwords
Posting a question to the gmail forums (to date, no reply)
Complete internet searches on similar problems, to date nothing more recent than 2010. Those fixes, named above, did not work.
Switching to Opera (hated) Likewise with Chrome.
I am something of a luddite but my semi-educated guess is that there is some Javascript problem. I am also wondering if it might not be connected to chat which is disabled but I can't make go away.
Any ideas about what I can do to fix this. I use Firefox as a primary browser and need a second browser to access other emails and accounts.
Thanks in advance.
This is the first part of the crash report. It is many, many, many lines long and I have access to the report info if that will help in anyway. I didn't want to add more as I felt I was pushing the margins of post size with this. Just trying to provide as much info as I can.
Process:         Safari [159]
Path:            /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari
Identifier:      com.apple.Safari
Version:         5.0.6 (5533.22.3)
Build Info:      WebBrowser-75332203~3
Code Type:       X86 (Native)
Parent Process:  launchd [68]
Interval Since Last Report:          22409 sec
Crashes Since Last Report:           4
Per-App Interval Since Last Report:  4315 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report:   3
Date/Time:       2011-10-20 09:32:10.860 -0500
OS Version:      Mac OS X 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000000000018
Crashed Thread:  0
Thread 0 Crashed:
0   com.apple.WebCore                 0x94bc1412 WebCore::JSDOMWindowBase::shouldInterruptScript() const + 18
1   com.apple.JavaScriptCore          0x958c24e6 JSC::TimeoutChecker::didTimeOut(JSC::ExecState*) + 422
2   com.apple.JavaScriptCore          0x958c2315 cti_timeout_check + 117
3   ???                               0x15f32205 0 + 368255493
4   com.apple.JavaScriptCore          0x95821945 JSC::Interpreter::executeCall(JSC::ExecState*, JSC::JSObject*, JSC::CallType, JSC::CallData const&, JSC::JSValue, JSC::ArgList const&) + 1413
5   com.apple.JavaScriptCore          0x958213b1 JSC::call(JSC::ExecState*, JSC::JSValue, JSC::CallType, JSC::CallData const&, JSC::JSValue, JSC::ArgList const&) + 81
6   com.apple.WebCore                 0x9465ace0 WebCore::JSEventListener::handleEvent(WebCore::ScriptExecutionContext*, WebCore::Event*) + 2560
7   com.apple.WebCore                 0x9465a1ff WebCore::EventTarget::fireEventListeners(WebCore::Event*, WebCore::EventTargetData*, ***::Vector<WebCore::RegisteredEventListener, 1ul>&) + 207
8   com.apple.WebCore                 0x94551b57 WebCore::EventTarget::fireEventListeners(WebCore::Event*) + 119
9   com.apple.WebCore                 0x945f97e8 WebCore::EventTarget::dispatchEvent(***::PassRefPtr<WebCore::Event>) + 88
10  com.apple.WebCore                 0x948e8096 WebCore::XMLHttpRequestProgressEventThrottle::dispatchEvent(***::PassRefPtr<Web Core::Event>, WebCore::ProgressEventAction) + 54
I also get this message from Google.
'Some Gmail features failed to load'
Symptoms:
An error message reading 'Some Gmail features failed to load. If this problem persists, try reloading the page, using the older version, or using basic HTML mode. Learn more.'
Cause:
A flaky or unstable network connection may be temporarily preventing all of Gmail's features from loading completely. In most cases, most of Gmail will work correctly, and you'll be able to use it as usual.
Solution:
While the problem persists, try the solutions suggested in the error message.

Answer 1

Carolyn:
Thanks for the reply. Looking at some of your older replies on similar issues prompted me to try the following:
Download current version of Flash. This did not fix.
But...
I am testing to see if a Java update is doing the trick. So far, at 15 20 minutes and counting, I have had no messages from either the google applications or from Safari about slow scritps. Usually Safari has crashed by now so I am cautiously hopeful!
If things don't crash again today, I'll repost.
Thanks again for the reply. And for past posts with similar issues. The knowledge base helped!
BChase
PS: I'd tried the cookie thing several times previously and, in my case, it did not fix the problem. Sorry that I'd forgotten to post that above. I was at my wits end as I'd been fighting this, daily, for 3+/- weeks.