Fiddler

If you're a developer, debug your Web Traffic using Fiddler.

What is Fiddler?

Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP(S) traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler is designed to be simple to use and highly extensible.

Web Developer's Add-ons

Microsoft's IE Developer Toolbar offers assorted web developer features. (IE7 only; IE8 has a superior feature built in; just hit F12.)

Nikhil's WebDevHelper bar is a great script debugger with a lightweight HTTP traffic viewer. It has many ASP.NET helper functions.

Microsoft's IE Powertoys for WebDevs (includes the "View Partial Source" context menu)

Search your site

It's easy to offer the user the ability to search your site from anywhere, using the XML scripts produced by the Search Provider Builder. Simply download the XML file, place it on your server, and set a META tag or attach it to a link or button in your HTML.

Run IE 6, 7, and 8 on the same PC

Microsoft is now offering a free copy of VirtualPC and a virtual hard disk containing IE6, allowing you to run IE6 and IE7 on the same physical PC. This is useful for doing side-by-side rendering tests with only one machine.

Virtual PC 2007 is available here: www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/virtualpc/default.mspx
The Virtual machine images are available here: Virtual PC Images for Testing IE6, IE7, IE8

Microsoft Visual Web Developer

The no-cost Visual Web Developer offers a debug environment that works great for debugging Javascript. Other script debugging resources are also available.

Enhance the View > Source command

In IE8, no registry hacking is required; choose your view source editor using the Developer Tools "File" menu.

Using the registry, you can change the editor used by Internet Explorer's View | Source menu item.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\View Source Editor\Editor Name

Notepad2 is a popular freeware Notepad replacement which does syntax highlighting. You can set HTML highlighting as the default using Notepad2's View | Syntax Scheme menu item.

Troubleshooting FavIcons

Read this article to learn more about making site icons appear in the Address Bar, tab, and Favorites.

A few words on Cookies

Internet Explorer recently changed the number of cookies allowed per domain from 20 to 50. For more information on this change, and on IE cookie handling in general, check out the IEBlog announcement.

Detect IE Bitness (32bit / 64 bit)

javascript:alert(window.navigator.cpuClass);

... shows "x64" in 64bit ie, and "x86" in 32bit IE on x64.

Or, you can sniff the token in the user-agent string.

32bit IE on 64bit Windows: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; WOW64; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)
64bit IE on 64bit Windows: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; Win64; x64; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)

Running pages (including script) from your local computer

Want to get rid of this Information bar when debugging HTML pages on your local computer?

Goldbar

See http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537628.aspx about adding the Mark of the Web to your page.

<!doctype html>

<html>
<body onload="window.alert('hi');">
</body>
</html>