Help! Safari (and Chrome) not behaving right in certain contexts

[Snowy_River]

Ok, so I've been chasing this one for a while. I've repeatedly reset (cleared all caches, history, plug-ins, etc) Safari. I only just discovered that what ever is going on is effecting Chrome as well, but not Firefox.

The easiest place that I've found to demonstrate it is by trying to go to Vimeo.com, which looks like the attached image. In Firefox it comes up properly. In Chrome it looks similar to Safari. (I only recently downloaded Chrome, and only just thought to try Vimeo there.)

I've reinstalled the operating system (nominally doing a clean install). I'm kinda out of ideas short of erasing the whole drive and reinstalling onto a clean drive, and that scares the daylights out of me (not because I haven't done it before, or anything, but because it is a LOT of work to get things back up to nominal performance with all apps installed, etc., especially given that trying to do a restore from Time Machine backup could just bring the bug back...)

Does anyone in this great community have any suggestions for me?

Thanks!

 

[e93to]

Did you check whether JavaScript is not disabled?

Not sure about Chrome, but on Safari go to preferences -> security, and make sure JavaScript is enabled.

Otherwise, I wouldn't know what could be causing that

 

[Snowy_River]

Yup. Javascript is enable...

Oh, and, incidentally, I don't really care about what is causing it, other than as a means of understanding how to fix it. If I can fix it without ever knowing what the actual problem was, I'm ok with that...

 

[997440]

In Safari, I was able to reproduce the effect shown in your attached screenshot by ticking "Disable Styles" in the "Develop" dropdown menu, in Safari's menu bar. See if it's ticked in yours.

[To add the "Develop" menu : Safari --> Preferences --> Advanced --> tick box, Show Develop menu in menu bar]

 

[Snowy_River]

Nope. It's not ticked. And if it were, I'd be seeing the problem on a lot more web pages, including Mac Rumors.

Thanks for the attempt...

 

[Snowy_River]

For what it's worth, another symptom is that SilverLight won't work (it says that it's not installed even though it is), which prevents me from watching movies on Amazon Prime.

 

[997440]

Did you notice if the CSS problem is happening at https, or https and http mixed sites? If so check that your system time, date and timezone are correct. Info site plus relevant ASC link within page -- http://www.mackungfu.org/facebook-not-loading-properly-in-safari-no-stylesheet-css

Have you tried a different user account?

 

[Snowy_River]

So, that was the first bit of interesting advice. I just created a new account, and in the new account Vimeo did come up properly in Safari.

So, now I need to determine what the next step is. Apparently my main account is at least partly corrupt. But, what now? Is there a plist file that I can trash? Do I need to try to copy all of my data into a new account?

 

[e93to]

Disable/delete plugins and extensions including Flash, Java (not JavaScript), etc.

Look at console, and see if there is abnormal code when loading pages on Safari/Chrome.

Disable location service for those browsers. Disable anything that has access to Safari and Chrome.

Turn off iCloud sync for Safari. Log out of Google account on Chrome.

Reinstall Silverlight

Boot into Recovery mode and check + repair permissions.

Call Apple for help. A representative can remote-control your computer.

Good luck man. Hopefully you get this sorted out soon. It looks pretty annoying

 

[997440]

@Snowy_River

Since Safari does work in a different user account, I'd* follow the steps in these links to ASC.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/29114020#29114020
^^^^^The answer by Eric Root marked as solved. Beyond that, within that answer is a link to a more thorough step by step troubleshooting answer(s) by Linc Davis, referenced below.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/27690007#27690007
^^^^^You've already done step 1 of this link.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/27758710#27758710
^^^^^Only do the necessary steps as sequenced.

*I'm new to OS X so I'm not comfortable advising people to delete or remove Library items. If it were my machine, I would use the above links to troubleshoot an issue similar to or the same as yours because:
#1 - I've done extensive searches on the issue and have found no solution.
#2 - I trust Linc Davis and his (and Eric Root's) answers are logical.

YMMV. If anyone sees a flaw or danger in these steps, please advise accordingly.

 

[Weaselboy]

So, that was the first bit of interesting advice. I just created a new account, and in the new account Vimeo did come up properly in Safari.

So, now I need to determine what the next step is. Apparently my main account is at least partly corrupt. But, what now? Is there a plist file that I can trash? Do I need to try to copy all of my data into a new account?

You may have a launch item of some sort running in the main user account that is causing this. I doubt it is a browser setting since you say it happens in both Safari and Chrome. Try holding the shift key at boot up to start in safe mode. That will stop all launch and startup items from running.

If that fixes it, reboot to regular mode and run an Etrecheck report for us and post the results so we can help you find what is running in the background. The report is anonymized, so you can just post the whole thing here.

 

[Snowy_River]

Ok. I tried booting in safe mode. Nada. The problem still persists.

As for the other steps (clearing cache, history; deleting extensions and plugins; deleting preferences files), I've gone through all of those steps already, but I guess I'll try them again...

Thanks to everyone who's contributing. This is definitely an odd situation...

 

[Snowy_River]

Sigh.

I went through the whole process again. Safari continued to not behave properly through it all. Unless anyone else has any ideas, I think it may be time to try the grueling process of a clean wipe and restore from backup...

 

[997440]

Sigh.

I went through the whole process again. Safari continued to not behave properly through it all. Unless anyone else has any ideas, I think it may be time to try the grueling process of a clean wipe and restore from backup...

@Weaselboy offered a suggestion at post #11. He's pretty sharp and helpful. Run the tool and ping him and others may chime in as well. Maybe there's an app conflict of some kind that's affecting Safari and Chrome but not Fx. It is a strange issue.

Should've said earlier -- if you have any security software installed (pretty sure you don't), at least disable it, better still remove it, to see if it's creating a conflict.

 

[Manpanzee]

I am having a problem that seems similar, in that it appears across multiple browsers. Various page elements don't work right. For example: embedded tweets in articles don't appear, comment sections (both Disqus and Facebook-based) won't load, features of the ESPN website don't work. Some sites sometimes look like OP's example, but not always. I had to register for this site from my phone because the registration captcha wouldn't load on my computer. However, a lot of things work totally fine -- Netflix, Youtube, Facebook's and Twitter's actual sites, etc. Web browsers are the only applications exhibiting problems.

It seems like banner ads are loading in places they shouldn't and/or are loading incorrectly. I have attached some screenshots showing how the issues show up on this site. I also have been experiencing occasional redirects that shouldn't happen -- in one case the redirect went through "VentureAd". I Googled that and found only things that seemed to be trying to bait me into downloading malware.

I started to notice some issues about a month ago, when some types of embedded video wouldn't appear -- not that the videos wouldn't load, but rather the field where the video should appear wasn't there at all. Last week I updated to El Capitan, and that's when things really got worse.

I've tried a bunch of things. I've uninstalled and re-installed Flash, I've uninstalled and re-installed browsers, I've disabled all extensions (didn't have many to begin with). My only active plugins are Flash player and Silverlight. I've tried clearing cookies and browser history. Some of the times that last part has seemed to "work", but eventually the problems reappear. Right now I've tried it again and it isn't helping. I've tried rebooting in safe mode and the problem persists. Opening things in incognito windows helps... some of the time. I had to use an incognito window to post this, because the login and post fields wouldn't appear otherwise. I've looked at the console but I don't know enough for that to help me much. I've ran EtreCheck and it didn't turn up anything obvious.

Here's the part where it gets really confusing and concerning: I have a dual boot on my computer set up via Boot Camp, with Windows 8. I very rarely use that. Yesterday I decided to just go use Windows for the sites that were having problems... and the same issues were present there. So the problem is appearing across operating systems on the same machine.

I'm really at a loss here. Hope someone can help, and hope there's a solution other than "wipe everything and start fresh".

 

[Weaselboy]

in one case the redirect went through "VentureAd".

Sounds like you may have inadvertently installed some adware on there. Try downloading and running the app MalwareBytes to get rid of it. If that does not work, post up the Etrecheck report so we can have a look.

 

[Manpanzee]

Sounds like you may have inadvertently installed some adware on there. Try downloading and running the app MalwareBytes to get rid of it. If that does not work, post up the Etrecheck report so we can have a look.

I ran Malwarebytes. It did find and remove one thing, but I haven't seen any changes.

I am back to posting from my phone, since the login field won't load on my computer. So I can't post the Etrecheck report right now.

Earlier, when I was able to post here (albeit requiring Incognito mode), I was using the WiFi at a library. Now I'm back home and the problem seems worse. I am wondering if something related to my network settings could be involved.

 

[Snowy_River]

@Weaselboy offered a suggestion at post #11. He's pretty sharp and helpful. Run the tool and ping him and others may chime in as well. Maybe there's an app conflict of some kind that's affecting Safari and Chrome but not Fx. It is a strange issue.

Should've said earlier -- if you have any security software installed (pretty sure you don't), at least disable it, better still remove it, to see if it's creating a conflict.

Well, as I've gone through the whole process, that included starting up in safe mode, including both holding the shift key during startup and during login, per the instructions in the linked Apple Support Community posting. The problem persisted even then.

My list of login items is short. They are Air Video, SpeechSynth, Trackball Works, Transporter, PearPad and MenuMeters. And none of these have changed from before this problem came up.

Interestingly, there is a site that seems to be effected in Safari but not Chrome. In Safari, Amazon Prime Video says that Silverlight isn't installed, even if I have just installed it. In Chrome it works fine.

Shortly, I'm going to have another computer to work tag-team with this one. I'll try doing a migration of my main account to the new computer. If the problem is solved by that, then I'll format the drive on this one, reinstall Mac OS X, then migrate all the files back. Hopefully that will solve this issue.

If anyone else has any suggestions before I launch into these drastic steps, I'd still love to hear them!

And, again, thanks to all who have already tried to help.

 

[Gregg2]

No need to wipe and reinstall. The new account works. Move your stuff and trash the balky account.