I was up at Penn State IST school this past week giving a lecture to a class as part of our recruiting. As part of the class, which was about application integration, I touched on the HTTP protocol. I believe that it’s extremely important that everyone starting out in web application programming or web-based integration have a deep knowledge of the HTTP protocol. Although you should eventually read a book about HTTP and ultimately read the protocol itself, sometimes it’s easier to learn by tinkering. Along these lines, I thought it would be interesting to provide a quick demo of using Fiddler to inspect the HTTP protocol. I’ve included the screencast here. My apologies for the speed of the screencast. I was in a hurry to get it done and it sounds like I had an energy drink of five too many when I did the voice-over.
I used Camtasia for Mac to record the screencast. Camtasia for Mac is a relatively new entrant to the marketplace and is priced at $99 to compete directly with Screenflow, the long time incumbent in the Mac screencast market. The tool couldn't be easier to use. It took no time at all to capture the screencast and post-capture editing, an area where Camtasia has always shined, is both powerful yet incredibly intuitive. If you're in the market for a Mac screencasting tool, I can only recommend Camtasia. You can pick up a free 30 day trial and, after that, $99 introductory pricing will get you the full product.