I had a problem with safari (and firefox) hanging on certain web pages (like google). I tried various suggestions I had found online without success. Last night, I did a complete reinstall with a reformat of the disk thinking that is about as a clean install as possible. I confirmed that all seemed to work fine. I had not done any of the software updates. I then turned on the firewall and immediately started having hangs again. I turned the firewall off and everything seemed to work fine. I installed all the software updates and everything still works as long as the firewall is turned off. So ... I don't think my clean install had anything to do with it but it was the fact that initially the firewall was turned off. So if you are having hangs and your firewall is turned on, try turning it off and see if that doesn't fix it for you.
Phillip
Phillip