If you were curious about how iPad-specific versions websites of your favorite websites are rendered but don't actually own an iPad yet, this is a way to view those pages using your Mac's version of Safari.
*Caution* This tip/hack requires you to modify a file within Safari.app's resource folder. I cannot guarantee this will not cause you grief or break the application's code signing.
This tip also requires you to install the Developer's Tools (for the use of Property List Editor.app) or at least be familiar with editing .plist files
1). From Safari, go to the Preferences menu and select the "Advanced" tab.
2). Enable "Show Develop in menu bar"
3). Quit Safari
4). In Finder, access the "Go" menu and select "Go to Folder..." In the dialog box, enter "/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources"
5). In the Resources folder, locate the file "UserAgents.plist"
Back up the file somewhere safe just in case this hack goes awry. I dragged it to my Desktop and renamed it "UserAgents.plist.bak"
6.) Open the original UserAgents.plist file with Property List Editor.app
7)...
Now, somewhere in between the items that already exist, you will want to create a new entry. I found that "Item 4" was just a separator and "Item 5" was the first of the "Mobile Safari" user agents. I simply copied "Item 5" and pasted it. (select "Item 5", them press ⌘-C followed by ⌘-V). This copies all the attributes of Item 5 to a new entry called Item 6 and renumbers all the entries that follow.
8). Change the properties of Item 5 to match the iPad's characteristics (i.e., name = "Mobile Safari", version= "3.2", platform= "iPad")
9). For the "user-agent" string, enter the user agent properties of the iPad (gleamed from this link),
Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10
10). Choose "File" > "Save As..." and save to the Desktop. Do not change the name.
11.) Drag the UserAgents.plist file from the Desktop into the /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources folder (Finder will ask you to want to replace the original and will ask you to authenticate)
12). Open Disk Utility.app and run a "Repair Permissions" on your hard drive.
13). Relaunch Safari, and in the "Develop" menu, select "User Agent". You will now see an option to use the iPad user agent string. When selected, sites like GMail and Facebook will display the iPad versions of their sites.
Enjoy! Post here and let me know how it went... But remember, I make no promises that this won't muck up your Safari.app. Seems to be working well for me, anyways.
*Caution* This tip/hack requires you to modify a file within Safari.app's resource folder. I cannot guarantee this will not cause you grief or break the application's code signing.
This tip also requires you to install the Developer's Tools (for the use of Property List Editor.app) or at least be familiar with editing .plist files
1). From Safari, go to the Preferences menu and select the "Advanced" tab.
2). Enable "Show Develop in menu bar"
3). Quit Safari
4). In Finder, access the "Go" menu and select "Go to Folder..." In the dialog box, enter "/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources"
5). In the Resources folder, locate the file "UserAgents.plist"
Back up the file somewhere safe just in case this hack goes awry. I dragged it to my Desktop and renamed it "UserAgents.plist.bak"
6.) Open the original UserAgents.plist file with Property List Editor.app
7)...
Now, somewhere in between the items that already exist, you will want to create a new entry. I found that "Item 4" was just a separator and "Item 5" was the first of the "Mobile Safari" user agents. I simply copied "Item 5" and pasted it. (select "Item 5", them press ⌘-C followed by ⌘-V). This copies all the attributes of Item 5 to a new entry called Item 6 and renumbers all the entries that follow.
8). Change the properties of Item 5 to match the iPad's characteristics (i.e., name = "Mobile Safari", version= "3.2", platform= "iPad")
9). For the "user-agent" string, enter the user agent properties of the iPad (gleamed from this link),
Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B334b Safari/531.21.10
10). Choose "File" > "Save As..." and save to the Desktop. Do not change the name.
11.) Drag the UserAgents.plist file from the Desktop into the /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources folder (Finder will ask you to want to replace the original and will ask you to authenticate)
12). Open Disk Utility.app and run a "Repair Permissions" on your hard drive.
13). Relaunch Safari, and in the "Develop" menu, select "User Agent". You will now see an option to use the iPad user agent string. When selected, sites like GMail and Facebook will display the iPad versions of their sites.
Enjoy! Post here and let me know how it went... But remember, I make no promises that this won't muck up your Safari.app. Seems to be working well for me, anyways.