When Written: Aug 2010
With HTTPWatch you can see exactly what your web application is doing
When writing code for a complicated web site or web application it can be difficult to see what exactly is going on, are the web services being called correctly? Are they returning the right results? Where the performance bottlenecks might be? The questions are never ending! Obviously the excellent debugging facilities of development tools like Visual Studio help a considerable amount, but sometimes it is useful actually to see all the calls that are being made by your web page and it is here that tools that ‘sniff’ the HTTP traffic come in useful.
One of the best in my opinion is HTTPWatch(http://www.httpwatch.com ) this being a free download for the basic version, which will do a considerable amount of useful work, although the extra facilities offered by the paid-for version are considerable so that you may find yourself reaching for the plastic. To get an idea of the level of extra information that you get from the paid-for version just point HTTPWatch to one of their designated test sites like EBay or Google to see what is happening ‘under the hood’, it makes for interesting viewing.
Article by: Mark Newton
Published in: Mark Newton