Fiddler – the HTTP debugging proxy
November 9th, 2007
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
If you develop Web pages and you need to see what's actually in the traffic to and from the browser, you'll want to check out Fiddler. Fiddler is a really useful free add-on for Internet Explorer. It's particularly useful if you're developing Web applications that use AJAX, or if you want to investigate what actually gets sent to the server when you fill out an online form, or if your PC starts running slowly and you want to check whether there's lots of HTTP traffic going on that you weren't aware of. I found it interesting, and not a little alarming, to see how often passwords I type into a browser are sent up to the server as plain text that anyone along the way could read using a packet sniffer.
Take a look at the Quick Start screencast from fiddlertool.com: 
This video is hosted at: http://www.fiddlertool.com/Fiddler/firstrun.asp
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