This is one of those things I needed but never knew existed till I heard about it on a mailing list today. Live HTTP Headers is a Firefox plugin that enables you to view HTTP headers in real time. It even allows you to edit the request and replay it.

In the past, I’ve had to capture the network traffic with a packet sniffer such as Wireshark and analyse the dump. Now, it’s right there in my browser. Impressive.

There are other alternatives out there. Another app that got a mention is Fiddler. Fiddler uses a proxy-based approach. This means that it will work across a wide range of browsers and then some. Like its name suggest, you can fiddle with the incoming and outgoing data.

I now have Live HTTP Headers installed on my system. I’ve yet to try out Fiddler but you bet I will.