Have you ever been surfing the web and wondered, "What the hell is this web page downloading into Internet Explorer?"
These days, most web pages are just a single HTML file with a bunch of graphics from the local web site but rather are massive, complex layers of frames, cookies, redirected objects and HTML pages. A single web page like CNET.COM can:
- Place a cookie on your system from CNET.COM
- Show an advertising graphic from GoogleAds and place another cookie on your system from that ad
- Display some HTML in a separate frame that comes from NEWS.COM, a sister site and place another cookie on your system for that web site
- Display a banner at the top of the screen from ENGAGE.COM…
Etc. etc. The bottom line is because the Internet provides such easy redirection without the end user knowing what’s going on in a browser session, and everything is so "cloaked", end users don’t know who they’re REALLY accessing when they hit a web page.
Unless you use a tool like HTTPWatch.
One of my little secrets is using a HTTP spy-type application for determining where a web page is going and what they’re doing in order to figure out a company’s affliations, or to determine why a given web site takes so darned long to load. This tells me who the culprit is and what it is that either is consuming a lot of bandwidth or what component it is that Internet Explorer is having trouble consuming.
HTTPWatch installs in Internet Explorer (both IE6.0 & IE7.0) and provides you with real time information about what it is that a given web page is really doing, where its going, and what kind of content is being pulled down. It will record/log everything that’s going and and even decode HTTPS encryption or HTTP compression – something that most protocol spy applications have trouble with.
More importantly, it’s easy-to-use (it’s just a button on Internet Explorer) and the basic version is free. The professional version is $249 which is no chump change but for the company that’s developing applications that communicate over the Internet or act as a portal, this tool can be incredibly valuable.
WHAT ABOUT FIDDLER?
For those of you looking for a cheap version that is, in my opinion, a less clean but a little more full featured without having to pay a dime, check out Microsoft Fiddler. It does many of the same things without the elegance of HTTPWatch. They even have a new tool out called RPASpy that will inspect HTTPS encapsulated packets however the tool is really alpha code and not very stable.
Be aware that Fiddler has always been a developer’s tool and isn’t exactly the most user friendly thing in the world if you’re not a web developer working on web services-based applications.
http://www.fiddlertool.com/fiddler/
http://www.fiddlertool.com/fiddler/rpaspy.asp
Kurt Shintaku's Blog 