In certain circumstances, Safari will hang when uploading documents, eventually causing the server to throw a read timeout error. This has been tested again Safari 3.1.1 but apparently happens with earlier versions too.

You can tell if you are experiencing this bug if:

• files upload are hanging and eventually time out; this may happen intermittently
• if you wait 1 (or 5 depending) minutes and then submit/upload, it works
• you are likely working a fast local intranet connect rather than a slower internet connection
• the form works fine in other browsers such as Firefox

This bug is ably described here (http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/webkit-unassigned/2007-January/026203.html) and apparently is something happening at a very low level of the TCP/IP stream. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't really seem to believe this is a bug (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5760).

I do not have a workaround for this, except by disabling Keep-Alive on Safari.

See also:

• http://trac.edgewall.org/ticket/5226#comment:9

Ars Technica reports on the unforking of Apple's Webkit (the technology behind the Safari browser) and Konqueror's KHTML:

There is one major web rendering engine that grew entirely out of the open source world: KHTML is KDE's web renderer which was built from the ground up by the open source community with very little original corporate backing.  The code was good and branches were born as a result, the best known being Webkit.  Now, after years of split, KHTML and Webkit are coming together once again.

Why is this good news?

• previously, it was difficult if not impossible to get clients to support UNIX users. Given Vista's bellyflop and the potential for enterprise and home adoption of Ubuntu Linux, we'll see great transportability of websites across platforms
• more developer attention for Safari, which is turning out to be a very nice browser. With Apple's recent support for Safari on Windows, it now becomes a lot easier to develop cross platform web applications without having a room full of hardware
• the possibility of iPhone compatible hardware (i.e. sized screen) running KHTML that can now run iPhone apps

This is a good place as any to mention that the BlogMatrix Platform will support Safari as a "first class" browser, alongside IE 7 and FF 2. And we're 98% of the way there, mainly held up on minor TinyMCE issues. We felt supporting Safari was important because there's so many people using Macintoshs these days, especially mover and shaker types. And with this announcement, it looks like we might have good Linux support soon too.