TMO Quick Tip - Safari 3.1: The Magical Develop Menu

by , 7:30 AM EDT, March 24th, 2008

Safari 3.1 isn't only faster than earlier versions of Apple's Web browser, it also offers easy access to the Develop menu and all of its features. The downside is that you have to enable the menu. The upside is that's easy to do.

Here's how:

• Launch Safari and then choose Safari > Preferences.
• Select the Advanced tab.
• Check Show Develop in menu bar.

Enable the Develop menu in Safari's preferences.

The Develop menu's User Agent option is one of the features I really like. If I visit a Web site that blocks me out and claims to be incompatible with Safari, I hop over to the User Agent option and select a different Web browser. This makes Safari masquerade as a different browser, and in some cases I can access and use the Web site without any problems.

You can trick Web servers into thinking Safari is a different browser.

This isn't a fix for every Web site that shuns Safari, but it works often enough for me that it's worth a shot. Some sites are coded to be compatible only with Microsoft's Internet Explorer for Windows, however, which leaves us Mac users pretty much without many options. It isn't exactly the friendliest way to code a site, and it certainly fails to embrace the open standards the Web advocates, but lucky for us Web surfers there are plenty of site coders out there that get what "standards" really means.

Jeff Gamet is TMO's Morning Editor and Reviews Editor. He lectures, teaches and speaks on Mac OS X and design-related topics, and is the author of The Designer's Guide to Mac OS X from Peachpit Press.

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