Opening a New Tab in Safari causes distortion, lag, stutter

[mac000]

On my Al macbook just recently when I hit Cmd-T to open a tab, safari starts to stutter, beach ball, and a distorted screen image (the size of the browser) appears for 3-5 seconds and the tab finally becomes available. what is going on here and how can I fix it?

Never had a problem before and I'm using the latest Safari update. Its been happening for a few days now

 

[zachsilvey]

If you have Safari 4 it could be trying to render the thumbnails for the "Top Sites".

 

[mac000]

will cleaning Safari's cache fix this? Is there something I can do ...

 

[Ashka]

Emptying the Cache wont hurt.
Changing your preferences under Safari > General > Open new Tab with > Empty page or anything other than Top Sites would help too..
S.

 

[zachsilvey]

Emptying the Cache wont hurt.
Changing your preferences under Safari > General > Open new Tab with > Empty page or anything other than Top Sites would help too..
S.

Exactly, I set all browsers to open "about:blank" instead of that useless "Top Sites" feature.

 

[Gregg2]

To completely disable Top Sites, go to Safari > Preferences > General

New windows open with: Top Sites
Change it to something else. Obviously, you can do the same for New Tabs.

(You'll also see Top Sites in the Show All Bookmarks window. Drag that up, don't stop when it first stops moving. It will be reduced to a thin bar.)

Now delete the Image Cache. Choose Safari > Reset Safari... and select Remove All Webpage Preview Images. Click Reset. Now go to YourUserName/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari and select the Webpage Previews folder. Press Cmd-I and click Locked. Now it won't accumulate a jpeg and png of every web page you visit. I saved over 500MB of disk space!