MacBook – Why do the internet browsers stop working

This is a known “bug” which I don’t know if Apple will ever consider a bug.

The problem is that the list of browsers is generated “dynamically” each time you click on it (or at least the 1st time after Safari has been launched); the reasoning behind this is that different users will have a different set of browsers, so the list cannot be hardcoded. So given the above, the shortcut fails to work until the list has been “generated” by Safari. This occurs when you display the menu.

A possible solution would be to use Automator and create a service that opens the current safari page onto Chrome. But that’s beyond the scope of this answer.

TLDR version: There’s nothing you can do other than file a bug report at Apple if you want to stick with the same shortcut technique. Alternatives involve Automator.

I can't be 100% sure which of these resolved the issue but i took these steps and everything is now working (touch wood):

1. Terminal
   • sudo mv ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain.bak
   • sudo mv /Library/Keychains/System.keychain /Library/Keychains/System.keychain.bak
2. Reboot
3. I'd now lost network connectivity and wifi wouldn't connect- i think this is because the wireless key is stored in the keychain which i'd "deleted". I managed to resolve this by going to network preferences, wifi, assist-me and stepping through the wizard.
4. Lastly i ran software update and upgraded to 10.7.3

Voila