Bugs & Fixes: Safari Preferences solve two Safari-related glitches

31.08.2012
I recently stumbled over two Safari-related problems. In each case, specific features of a website did not work as expected. While my precise symptoms may be limited in scope, the overall problems are general ones and the solutions apply to a wide variety of similar situations.

One of my guilty pleasures is the NBC series . I'm especially a fan of the show's music. That's why I was glad to discover that showcasing the musical numbers from the series.

Unfortunately, when I attempted to view any of the Smash clips, I got nowhere. The rotating circle that indicates a video is loading just kept rotating, apparently intending to do so forever. No error message appeared. But neither did the video.

As a first diagnostic step, I shifted from Safari to Firefox. The videos played just fine in Firefox. This suggested that the problem was more likely with my installation of Safari than with the NBC website. Returning to Safari, I next checked what extensions I was running. As the videos were Flash-based, I first turned my attention to .

The ClickToFlash extension prevents Flash videos from automatically loading when you go to a webpage; instead you have to manually click the video to get it to run. While this extension has been a generally reliable performer for me, I suspected it was behind the trouble here. Sure enough, if I disabled the extension, the Smash videos successfully ran in Safari.