March 30, 2008 - A New Tool in My Tester's Tool Box - HttpWatch

While modifying a website which uses AJAX, we are converting from a rather non-standard implementation of AJAX calls to one that is a lot more standard.  But, we're still concerned about the number of the objects being downloaded, the size of each object, the time each object takes to download, the number of round-trips, etc.

We wanted a way to easily visualize what's happening.

HttpWatch provides a way.

From their web site:

HttpWatch is an HTTP viewer and debugger that integrates with Internet Explorer to provide seamless HTTP and HTTPS monitoring without leaving the browser window.

Change the way that you develop, debug and tune web sites today!

 

Features:

• A plug-in HTTP Viewer for Internet Explorer 6 & 7.
• See headers, cookies, caching and POST data
• Detailed information about HTTPS, compression, redirection & chunked encoding
• Real-time page and request level time charts
• Your users and customers can send you log files for free
• Millisecond accurate timings and network level data
• Use it in automated tests written in C#, Ruby, Javascript, ...

Right now, I'm using the free Basic Edition.  The Professional Edition can do even more.

Check out HttpWatch at http://www.httpwatch.com/

The company's blog has some really useful information for using HttpWatch, and tuning your system at http://blog.httpwatch.com/

See all the tools in my tool box at:
http://www.sqablogs.com/jstrazzere/55/Tester%26%2339%3Bs+Tool+Box.html

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