Safari 3.1: The Magical Develop Menu

March 23rd, 2008 at 3:00 PM - Tips by Jeff Gamet

Safari 3.1 isnit only faster than earlier versions of Appleis 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 thatis easy to do.

Hereis how:

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

The Develop menuis 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.

This isnit a fix for every Web site that shuns Safari, but it works often enough for me that itis worth a shot. Some sites are coded to be compatible only with Microsoftis Internet Explorer for Windows, however, which leaves us Mac users pretty much without many options. It isnit 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.

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