Safari crashing very frequently -- possible clues

Question

Since upgrading to Leopard, Safari has been crashing very, very often. I've sent in hundreds, if not thousands, of crash reports (sometimes I would get multiple crashes in a few minutes, and every day, at least two or three). The problem is exacerbated with multiple tabs open, especially if you try to have a slew of pages (such as from RSS) trying to open at the same time in background tabs. If you wait for each page to load before clicking the next one, crashes are less frequent, but still occur. I updated and/or removed various plugins, but the crashes occur even with plug-ins disabled.
I noticed that the thread that crashed was always the same, javascript (KJS). And in fact, working with javascript disabled makes the crashes go away. But working without javascript simply isn't acceptable.
In a recent crash dump, I noticed that the top-level process had something to do with proxying.
Well, in fact, I'm a university researcher, and in order access our library's online article databases, I have to use their PAC proxy. That is, I normally work through a proxy server. So, I set up a proxy-less network location identical to the one with the proxy, and have been usng it for a few days.
No Safari crashes! I even tried to open a bunch of tabs all at once in the background, which would have almost certainly caused a crash.
So, take this as a possible clue and a possible workaround: safari + javascript + proxy = crashes.
By the way, I do consider this a bug in Safari & KJS even if the uni's proxy server *****. No way should a sucky proxy cause the browser to crash.
Greg Shenaut

Answer 1

This is not a bug in Safari; it's a problem with your proxy server. Regardless of what you consider it to be, that doesn't make it so. Blaming Apple is pointless as there's nothing they could do about it. You should be discussing your problems with your IT department. A PAC proxy server is called using a remote JavaScript file, so the problem is most likely in the way that file is written.
Browsing the web without JavaScript is perfectly acceptable. Unless a site or service actually uses JavaScript, there's no reason to have it turned on; same with Java. If you want to read RSS feeds, I suggest turning them off in Safari and using a dedicated RSS reader such as the free, open source Vienna or even NetNewsWire Lite.
Mulder