Safari 11.1

Article Comments
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Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/watchlist/safari-11-1/

Resolves multiple memory corruption issues and patches an address bar spoofing vulnerability. (Free)

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Every Safari release also includes additions and changes mainly of interest to web developers, particularly adding support for web standards. Of course such improvements eventually benefit the people browsing the web with Safari. The Safari 11.1 release notes for developers reviews these changes. Added support for ā€œService Workersā€ and some other changes are important for supporting Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), an umbrella term that involves a number of technologies that allow a web application to be more equivalent to a native application.

A curious change is the <img> tag in Safari now supports the use of video files. There arenā€™t a lot of details but the basic idea is to replace very inefficient animated GIF files with video files. To that end, there are some peculiarities to the use of video files in the img element; they will not play an audio track, they auto-play, and they loop. I donā€™t know if auto-play or looping can be disabled or if player controls can be enabled as are the norm for videos in the <video> element.

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I donā€™t use Safari in full screen mode. I have a personal fav window size for some reasons.
Since updating, I noticed that window size gets enlarged every time I open a new Safari window. Quite irritating.

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I swear Iā€™ve seen other reports of this too, but I canā€™t find them right now. Are Safari users seeing this?

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I see the same issue. Never had this problem before with Safari. It always remembered my window size just fine (unlike Finder ). But after this latest update to 10.13.4 Safari keeps wanting to increase from my preferred window size. Itā€™s a bit annoying. Iā€™m starting to suspect thereā€™s some conspiracy at Apple against preserving window settings. :laughing:

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Have you tried the Finder trick?

  1. Open Safari
  2. Close all windows
  3. Open a window
  4. Size the window where you want it
  5. without doing anything else, close the window

That should ā€˜saveā€™ the window size and position as the default.

But I use Safari almost exclusively in FSM (split FSM with Mail).

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I tried that and at least for me that unfortunately isnā€™t doing the trick (anymore).

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It might be a coincidence but ever since the time I updated to Safari 11.1 (in El Capitan) and applied Security Update 2018-002, the Data Detectors in Mail messages for URLs stopped working. When I click on the downarrow a generic popup for Safari appears as shown in this example:

datadetector%20fails

Other than the failure with URLs, the DD work for addresses, phone numbers, events, etc.

Console pops up errors such as this:

Apr 10 14:12:27 MacBook-Pro QuickLookUIHelper[14229]: -[NSKeyedArchiver initRequiringSecureCoding:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fb552c19790

Apr 10 14:12:27 MacBook-Pro QuickLookUIHelper[14229]: [QL] Exception raised while try to get preview for preview item: -[NSKeyedArchiver initRequiringSecureCoding:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fb552c19790

I donā€™t know what this exception is all about. Any ideas?

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I donā€™t have any ideas, but this is also happening to me on 10.12.6, without Security Update 2018-002 (Iā€™ve not installed it yet). I guess the ā€˜goodā€™ news is that maybe the issue which I complained about and attributed to SendGrid/email tracking, is in fact a bug unrelated to the new link format in TidBITS emails:

So hopefully Apple will fix this bug, and previews from TidBITS emails will start working again, even with the new SendGrid links.

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I think you will find this is unique to TidBits mails and that data detector for URLs in other email work fine. That is, itā€™s a Tidbits issue, not a mac issue.

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I should have mentioned that the issue applies to all Mail messages, not just TidBITS messages.

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Thanks. Much as the link tracking we did for the first two issues has its problems, it doesnā€™t seem to break the macOS Lookup feature, as you can see below. (Which it shouldnā€™t; the URLs are legit, just ugly.)

Lookup
Lookup.png687Ɨ676 198 KB

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Looks like the issue is not due to the updated Safari. I changed the default browser to Chrome and the same behavior still occurs for me in 10.11.6.

Chrome%20as%20default

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I upgraded to Safari 11.1 and every time I check my email I get a message that ā€œMessages expire from Deleted folder after 30 daysā€. I pressed the box for Do not show again but every time I exit Safari and go back into my email the message re-appears. I am using webmail.bell.net to access my email

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@ash002 This sounds like a setting somewhere in your webmail app, so perhaps look around in there. Itā€™s possible that Safari isnā€™t handling the webmail appā€™s dialog properly such that your response isnā€™t being recorded. You might also try loading your webmail in another browser like Chrome or Firefox and seeing if the dialog appears, and if saying ā€œDo not show againā€ is recorded in one of those browsers.

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Jolin,

Summary

The issue was resolved by reinstalling macOS 10.11.6. I think the problem arose when I was installing the Safari 11.1 and Security updates. The Safari update download began and I then tried to update the other a few moments later. After a restart only one of them had been successfully updated. Perhaps this screwed up something in the update processes.

At any rate, Iā€™m very happy to once again be able to view URL previews!

Summary

UPDATE 1:
After reinstalling 10.11.6 and running updates, I discovered that Safari 11.1 had not been updated. Only Security Update 2018-002 had been applied. The Safari update surfaced a couple of days later but Iā€™m not installing it.

On a different Macbook Pro running 10.11.6 I went ahead and installed both updates simultaneously only to discover that URL previews in Mail messages FAIL as I described previously. Thus I concluded that Safari 11.1 breaks the Data Detectors in Mail for URL previews.

I contacted Apple support and they had me capture system information which was sent to the software engineers. I should be hearing back in about 5 days and Iā€™ll post their response here.

UPDATE 2: April 30, 2018
Apple called me and the engineers verified that the problem is an incompatibility between Mail and Safari 11.1. An updated version is due out probably within a couple of weeks.

UPDATE 3: June 5, 2018
Four days ago Apple issued Safari 11.1.1 update which I thought would fix this issue but it didnā€™t. I called Apple again to find out why the bug is still there. The Engineering rep told me that Apple is not fixing the problem and I should upgrade the OS or get a new computer.

Crappy response from the software engineers who broke the Data Detector feature with the Safari 11.1 update. Everything was working fine with Safari 11.0.1.

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Iā€™m curious if the changes to Safari in the just released Security Update fix the Safari window size issue.

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Iā€™ve never seen that problem, so canā€™t comment on it, but it would be unusual for bug fixes to be included in what is described as a security update, especially one that has been rushed out as this one has.

-Al-

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Iā€™ve never seen a ā€œsecurity updateā€ that was GB sized beforeā€¦

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The Security Update 2018-001 (10.13.4) package (which is somewhat confusingly named macOSUpd10.13.4Supplemental) contains patches for a couple of macOS issues shown here APPLE-SA-2018-04-24-2 Security Update 2018-001 in addition to a complete replacement for Safari and WebKit. The majority is installed in several /System/Library directories, including what looks to be all the kernel extension (.kext) files in /System/Library/Extensions.

-Al-