Web development using Internet Explorer is often a more painful endeavour than developing with Firefox due to the lack of development tools in IE compared to Firefox. If requirements dictate Internet Explorer, the Fiddler add-on for IE provides valuable capabilities for inspecting the details of HTTP connections. From the website, "Fiddler is a HTTP Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP Traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data."
In this screen shot, you can see the sessions available for viewing in Internet Explorer, forms and fields available on the page, and the details of the HTTP header for this page. Other tabs show a hex view of the data, images in the page, any authentication associated with this HTTP session, caching details, and privacy details. The performance tab gives estimates for downloading this web page from various countries around the world. The Request Builder tab allows for the custom HTTP requests to be created and submitted. This feature is powerful in that it provides POST, PUT, HEAD, MOVE, TRACE, DELETE, CONNECT, PROPFIND, PROPPATCH, MKCOL, COPY, MOVE, LOCK, UNLOCK, and OPTIONS operations to given web URL via HTTP 0.9, 1.0, or 1.1. Any request headers and request body can be entered for these operations.
Other features include the ability to set breakpoints both before and after requests. At a breakpoint, you can mangle the headers, content, and all other information associated with a connection. When using a breakpoint before a request, you change what information the server receives and processes. When using a breakpoint after a request, you change what information the browser receives and processes. This can be very useful for debugging and even development. Instead of rebuilding and deploying an entire application for change a single line of javascript, you could simply intercept the response to test the fix.
There are many other miscellaneous features including modem speed simulation, simple ad removal, and a base64/url/hex encoding tool. Overall, the Fiddler add-on is a useful development tool for Internet Explorer to provide functionality similar to the LiveHTTPHeaders extension for Firefox and provide real-time request/response manipulation.
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Comments
your instructions on how to configure Firefox with Fiddler worked great, thanks
Fiddler can also be used with Firefox. To configure Firefox to use Fiddler, follow these steps:
1. Install and Run Fiddler once. This will create some files, one of which you'll need.
2.
In "My Documents" you will now see that there is folder for Fiddler.
Inside there you'll find a Scripts folder. Grab a copy of the full path
to this Scripts folder. This would typically be : C:\Documents and
Settings\{login_id}\My Documents\Fiddler\Scripts .
3. Open up Firefox, go to Options under the Tools menu and then click on the Connection Setting button.
4.
Down the bottom of the connection settings is "Automatic proxy
configuration URL:" Select this option and in the box put the file path
to the Scripts folder followed by BrowserPAC.js which is a file in the
Scripts folder. So the full path is : C:\Documents and
Settings\{login_id}\My Documents\Fiddler\Scripts\BrowserPAC.js
5. Hit the Reload button, then OK, close the options window and you are set.
6.
To Run Fiddler and Firefox, select Fiddler from the Start|All
Programs|Fiddler menu pick list to start it and then start Firefox as
you normally would.
This is great! I've always messed with HTTP via my own proxies or simple tools that just capture the raw HTTP traffic... but this GUI interface is great! I will defintely give it a spin.
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