31: Eric Lawrence: Debugging with Fiddler

Debugging with Fiddler

Have you ever wished for a tool that was easy to use and customize that would help you debug and security test your web applications? How awesome would it be if that tool was also free? Believe it or not, there is such a tool —Fiddler.

Fiddler is a web debugging proxy platform that monitors and modifies web traffic. This awesome freeware tool helps you to inspect traffic, set breakpoints, and “fiddle” with incoming and outgoing data.

About Eric Lawrence

Eric created two popular utilities for web enthusiasts: the Fiddler Web Debugger and SlickRun. A Program Manager for IE at Microsoft from 2004-2012, he joined Telerik in October 2012 to develop Fiddler full-time. He now lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and cat.

Quotes & Insights from this Test Talk

• You can run fiddler on top of Mono on Linux
• Fiddler is a web proxy debugger for debugging traffic between a computer and the internet
• Fiddler is like outlook for the web
• Sneak peak at whats new with Fiddler 2.5
• Security testing is one of the scenario that people use Fiddler for
• There are many plugins for Fiddler that allow you to do all kinds of cool things besides the standard functionality
• If you don’t use the Adobe “save for web” option all the edited meta data that is associated with that image is stored in the file. This will cause your website to load much slower if your not aware of this. Fiddler’s Show Image Bloat can help find these images.
• Fiddler is easy to extend using Fiddler script or C#
• Book Driven Development – when you forced to document something it forces you to think about it hard and in ways that you might have thought about it before.

Resources

• Get Fiddler – http://www.telerik.com/fiddler
• Debugging with Fiddler
• Watcher extension for Fiddler that allows you to perform passive security scans
• The Show Image Bloat extension scans JPEG and PNG image files for unnecessary embedded metadata.
• Blue Badge is a memoir that Eric is writing about his time at Microsoft
• Fiddler Add-ons
• Check Eric’s session out Lucking In: Growing Fiddler from a side-project to my full-time job at Codemash 2015
• Pluralsight Fiddler course

Connect with Eric

• Twitter: @ericlaw
• Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ieinternals/
• Company: http://www.telerik.com/fiddler

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