monline

WebScarab is a framework for analysing applications that communicate using the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. It is written in Java, and is thus portable to many platforms. WebScarab has several modes of operation, implemented by a number of plugins. In its most common usage, WebScarab operates as an intercepting proxy, allowing the operator to review and modify requests created by the browser before they are sent to the server, and to review and modify responses returned from the server before they are received by the browser. WebScarab is able to intercept both HTTP and HTTPS communication. The operator can also review the conversations (requests and responses) that have passed through WebScarab.

I have been looking for a cross-platform replacement for Fiddler for some time now. Today I stumbled upon Paros, which was written in Java and therefore should run on most Java-capable platforms without modification. Paros is not on par with Fiddler's feature set (and its development has been stalled for the last two years), but it's good enough for capturing/monitoring HTTP traffic on both Linux and Mac OS X.

I've found a thread about the problem, but no solution there. With a little help from Sysinternal's Process Monitor I could find out that the Tomcat installer misses the client subdirectory in the JRE\bin dir and the jvm.dll file inside that dir. In case of Sun's JRE the bin dir indeed contains a client\jvm.dll, but in case of JRockit that dir is called jrockit. Thus you can work around the issue by renaming the jrockit directory inside JRE/bin, do the install, then rename it back. However if you intend to keep the original name, then after the installation you've to alter the JVM path in the Tomcat configuration (the little app. sitting in the system tray) too to match the real JVM path.

I've been using FileZilla for ages now, but in the recent 3.x versions I had problems with password handling. The bookmarks feature is called "Site Manager" here. Each bookmark in Site Manager has a "logontype" parameter which can have a value of "Anonymous", "Normal", "Ask for password", "Interactive" and "Account". Without documentation (since FileZilla does not have any) it's not trivial to find out what each of these does.

Firefox Throttle is a Windows-only FF extension allowing you to simulate network connections with various bandwidths. A nice tool for a web developer if she/he wants to see how long it takes for an average dialup modem or a broadband ADSL user to get the website content. Here's the mozilla.org page of the extension in case you prefer to get your extensions from there. I wonder why it's Win only?

It seems some people really think that a PC is equal to a PC running Microsoft Windows. Eg. in this article they wrote:
Imho "Mac" and "Linux" are operating system families/flavours (each covering a number of operating systems), while a "PC" is a piece of hardware that might run a variety of OSes.

Compiz Fusion is "the" desktop manager of today. The 3D cube is just one feature/effect in it's repertoire. However if you're stick with Windows, CubeDesktop might be a viable alternative for you.

Charles was my choice of debugging proxy before Fiddler got worked out properly. The initial versions of Charles offered a lot more options, than the initial version of Fiddler. Today both are very feature rich and I'd suggest both to anyone. There're small details that might make you go with one or the other, but basically both are worked out quite well. Charles seemed to be abandoned for a long time (at least I remember that there was not much development at the time I discovered it many years ago), but since v2.x came out development is rolling again. Probably Charles has more features than Fiddler (at least this used to be the case with MS products and their competition ... and with time MS buys out the competition or just bankrupts them via marketing war or other means).

Fiddler is one of the few good software from Microsoft that I know (actually I don't remember whether this was an MS project right from the start or did they just simply buy out the developer company). It works only on Windows and recent versions require .NET, but it's nothing one cannot live with. It is feature rich, supports a lot of views of HTTP sessions, supports various methods for HTTPS traffic capturing, etc. This is one of the best HTTP debugging tools for use on the Windows platform.

My new 8GB SanDisk Cruzer Contour USB flash drive came with some special features preinstalled. It has the U3 software suite on it which might be useful for Windows fans, but not for me. Gooling revealed not much help, according to a macosxhints.com forum topic there's not much one can do to remove the special U3 read-only partition from the drive using Mac OS X. There's a Windows only removal tool (aka. Launchpad Removal Tool), which does a pretty good job, but you need Windows for it. Actually I just ran this tool in VMware Fusion v1.1.1 and it worked like a charm.