Web developers - what is the best tool for inspecting network traffic, and what is your default browser?

Question

I'm quite new at web development, and I heard about all kind of tools and plug-ins for inspecting the network traffic.
The vast majority of my work is on server side, and I work with ASP.NET if that's relevant..
For now I use Fiddler which seems great, but I also heard about Firebug (for firefox) and ieHttpHeaders.. are these in the same category as Fiddler or do they serve a different purpose? Are there more tools I should be aware of?

As my default browser I use Chrome because I think it's the fastest.

What do you use and why?

Edit: If you recomment a tool, could you please explain what it does, and why you chose it?
Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

Probably should make this a community wiki.

I use Firefox because I cannot live without some of my extensions. I stick usually with Firebug because of the nice integration with Firefox and an extension. I do have Fiddler installed to use with IE and also the Firefox extension.

I also run WireShark in case I need a deeper level of capture, packets.

Answer 2

Fiddler is good for looking at network traffic in detail.

Firebug does it also (under the net panel). And Firebug Lite for IE also deserves a look.

I personally use Firefox as my default browser and for development with Firebug.

For pure research I sometimes fire up Chrome because of its snappiness as you mentioned.

Answer 3

Firefox with firebug extension - the Net panel contains pretty much anything you could want to inspect network traffic.
Chrome has something very similar builtin (no extension needed), but has slightly better tools to benchmark the performance, along with an audit tab that firebug doesn't have.

Both are good. You might also want to try opera dragonfly which is a little different, but just as useful as those 2.

Answer 4

The Firebug net tab is useful for looking at the network activity. It is somewhat better integrated in the browser than Fiddler.

Answer 5

Ethereal can be very handy for network protocol analysis. Otherwise firefox / firebug as main tools.

Answer 6

0 down vote

As An web developer you should test the code on all the browser. you can use

Firefox with firebug extension as the default browser.

Answer 7

Firefox with firebug is good, you can also try Chrome which includes a suite of develop tools.