Following the release of Safari 3.2, which promised anti-phishing protection and improved JPEG and TIFF image handling, users promptly responded to the release. Unfortunately, the feedback was mostly negative, with almost 80 percent of the posts containing the word “crash.” Between then and now, Apple has released as many as two software updates, none of which addressed the issues surrounding version 3.2 of its standard web browser, Safari.

It is a known fact that Safari 3.2 contains a new version of the WebKit engine, which has been altered to limit the URL types that can be launched through the plug-in interface, but the issues causing the crashes are still to be zeroed in on. Apple Discussions users do provide some insight as to where the crashes might stem from. Some say third party software (add-ons) is to blame, while others realized that by turning off the very security measures implemented in 3.2 the browser stops crashing.

Discussions poster PatrickL notes that Safari crashed on him “five times in 20 minutes,” pointing out to the new security tweaks as being the main problem. “...I turned off the new anti-phishing feature and it works fine,” says Patrick. “I was logged into my company's Exchange email, GMail and Yahoo! No nefarious website, whatsoever, and it was crashing all over the place.”

Softpedia readers were also quick in reporting their issues with the new version of Safari: ”I've had 4 crashes within 30 minutes of 3.2,” reader Eric Shelton reveals. “This is ridiculous. My plugins are APPLE products like QuickTime and iPhoto something. Switching back to Firefox, and very disappointed with Apple. Didn't buggering up the MobileMe launch teach them about releasing stuff too soon?”

“I have a stock install of leopard 10.5.5, safari crashes opening apple's home page, looks like a double release in processing the java vm plugin,” says Justin. “This is very unfortunate but perhaps indicative of how thinly stretched engineering is at apple. Not nearly enough testing,” he wrote.

Very few users seem to get along just fine with the update: “Works like brand new fast if not faster than before,” Woody told us, while Wingsy said he hadn't experienced one hiccup after accessing dozens of websites.

Unfortunately, commenters seldom mention their system specs, which could potentially shed some light over which systems experience the most issues.

We'll keep an eye out for Apple's response to this. Anyone else affected?