Accessing "Windows Only" Web Sites With Safari


Some web sites are designed to only work with Internet Explorer on Windows. Sometimes, these web sites might work with most any browser, but the web site checks your browser and refuses to cooperate with anything but Internet Explorer on Windows.  Fortunately, Safari has the ability to "trick" these web sites into thinking Safari is really IE on Windows. If tricked in this way, the entire web site might not work, but more of it will usually work.

To accomplish this, you need to first add a "debug" menu to Safari, then use that menu to specify the user agent. The "user agent" is web lingo for the type of browser and computer you are using.  With Safari's debug menu, you can select several different user agents.  Step-by-step, here is how to do it:

1) Quit Safari so it's not running.
2) Run the program called "Terminal" which is located in your Applications->Utilities folder.
3) Type the following command into Terminal exactly as shown:
       defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
4) Quit from the terminal program, and launch Safari again. Safari should now have a "Debug" menu. If so, proceeed to step #5. If not, check the command you typed above.  Case is important.
5) In Safari, select the Debug -> User Agent -> Windows MSIE 6.0 menu item.

Now, any web sites that you access will think Safari is really Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows.  To switch this back, select "Automatically Chosen" as the user agent, which is the default. Then web sites will think you are using Safari again.  To completely get rid of the Safari debug menu (get back to normal), follow these steps.

1) Quit Safari so it's not running.
2) Run the program called "Terminal" which is located in your Applications->Utilities folder.
3) Type the following command into Terminal exactly as shown:
       defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 0
4) Quit from the terminal program, and launch Safari again. Safari should no longer have a "Debug" menu.