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Snoop on your HTTP headers - Today's Browser Tip

LiveHTTPHeaders for FirefoxHTTP headers are the information your web browser and web servers send back and forth before sending the web pages, images, etc. themselves. You never see this stuff, and most of it is pretty boring: stuff like cookies, user agent strings, language, encoding, and character set information. But if you're a web developer or just a curious geek, it can be fun and handy to be able to peek at them.

For Firefox there's the LiveHTTPHeaders extension, the king of the header viewers. You can launch it in a sidebar and it will show you the request and response headers for every single transfer that takes place, meaning you can see the headers not only for the current page, but for every image, JavaScript, CSS file, and so on which is included in the page. Want to know if that Flash movie is calling any other files? LiveHTTPHeaders will tell you. Following in its footsteps are ieHTTPHeaders which does the same thing in Internet Explorer, and the Web Developer Toolbar & Menu for Opera also duplicates the functionality (and does some other handy stuff, much of which will be familiar to users of Firefox's Web Developer Toolbar, as well). Lastly, Safari users have the SafariStand plugin to accomplish the task.

And in case you're not a web developer and never need to see the HTTP headers, there's still some fun to be had: some clever developers hide cute messages or quotations in their headers, most famously on Slashdot.
 

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