From time to time Mac
users encounter a website that
just doesn’t work
properly with Apple’s
Safari web browser. This is
usually a problem with the
developer of the website using
non-standard code, that is,
code that does not conform to
accepted international
web
standards (one
of the biggest perpetrators of
this is
Microsoft
Corporation - no
surprise there).
Well the good news is
that Mac users can often get
by these problem websites by
following a few simple steps.
I’ve seen this issue
with students who have to log
onto their school’s
website to access grades and
with airline staff who have
to check their schedules
online, both of which worked
fine after following these
instructions:
1. Start by quitting Safari
if its currently open.
2. Open Apple’s
Terminal application. Its
located in
Applications->Utilities:
3. In the Terminal window,
type the following command
exactly as shown, then press
Return (you can simply copy
it from here and paste it
into the Terminal
window):
defaults write
com.apple.Safari
IncludeDebugMenu
1
Here’s what it looks
like in my Terminal
window:
4. Relaunch Safari. You will
notice a new menu named
“Debug” in the
menu bar next to the Help
menu:
5. Click on the new
Debug menu and scroll right
down to the third-from-last
item (“User
Agent”) then select
“Windows MSIE
6.0” (Windows Microsoft
Internet Explorer 6.0):
6. Go the the website
you previously could not get
to work and try again. In
many cases, it will work just
fine.
Other options
Sometimes, depending
on just how far off web
standards the website
developer has gone, you may
still not be able to fully
access the site. For those
times, you can try using one
of the many other OS X web
browsers. Here are some of
them (there are
others):
Gordon Gonsalves,
2006
gordon@rightent.com
