Why doesn't my gmail work all the time in Safari?

I have Safari Version 3.0.4 (5523.15) for my mac and often when looking at my gmail things will freeze up or the icons won’t take me any where… what the heck? I usually just have to re-start Safari or go back to my igoogle page to fix the problem but it still happens a few times a week, even after emptying my cache, clearing my history and resetting safari. Does google run better on a different web browser?