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Playing the audio crashes IE for me (win2k+sp4)

But strangely, I was able to save the audio to listen to later with the help of the FABULOUS IE add-in Fidddler

I have NO idea why running IE/Fiddler on the parent reference URL with the audio interviews works while IE by itself crashes there.

Download, save, and re-distribute Fiddler while you still can before the media cartels outlaw it to prevent copyright infringement of their streamed, 'unsaveable' content (which will just be saved and reposted elsewhere on the Internet if it is worth saving and reposting like all the illegally available content already online.

Meanwhile, IE provides me with no means whatsoever to inspect how it is operating, no way to determine what the problem is if something goes wrong. This is unbelievably frustrating when I make my living writing web *applications*, not just web sites.

This is absolutely not true. IE has had debugger hooks since forever (at least IE4, which is the earliest IE that mattered). You simply need an external debugger in order to use them. Visual Studio works great, but you can use one of the free Express versions like Visual Web Developer Express, or you can use the archaic Microsoft Script Debugger. Enabling debugging does require poking around in the Tools -> Options Advanced tab to flip the counter-intuitively named "Disable script debugging (Internet Explorer)" to off (yes, the checkbox is a negative, so when it's checked debugging is disabled and when it's unchecked debugging is enabled). Once you've done that, you can attach your debugger to the iexplore.exe process or you can use the new debugger-related options in the "View" menu to attach, break, etc (may have to restart IE for those menu options to show up), or you can just wait for something to break and present with you a "do you want to debug?" prompt.

While hooking a debugger to IE is not quite as simple as it is in Firefox (install Firebug, you're done), it does allow you to work in a familiar interface (assuming you're familiar with Visual Studio, of course) and is sufficiently powerful. Couple that with the IE Developer Toolbar for DOM inspection and Fiddler for session inspection and you have all of the tools you need to debug even the largest of web applications. When you're done, don't forget to Drip for memory leaks.

The really sad thing about IE is that it merely takes up space in the web ecosystem; it cannot be said that it improves anything. It raises the bar for frustration tolerance among web developers but that's pretty much it. The only original idea that has come to HTML from Microsoft, sadly, has been the marquee tag, and I'm actually not really sure that it's still supported in IE.

Not directly to HTML, but Microsoft was responsible for creating XMLHTTP, the precursor to XMLHttpRequest, without which the whole "web2.0" "AJAXy" stuff wouldn't exist. I believe XMLHttpRequest is now a w3c standard, which never would've happened if not for XMLHTTP (and yes, IE7 finally does support a native XMLHttpRequest object so you don't have to have branches for XHR vs. XMLHTTP if you don't care about supporting IE6). Similarly, there would be no SVG if it weren't for VML (not to be confused with VRML). Saying that marquee is the best Microsoft's ever been able to contribute to the web is very, very shortsighted.

Fiddler for Windows - http://www.fiddlertool.com/ - and Charles for Mac OSX - http://www.xk72.com/charles/ - are debugging proxies. Very easy to use, and both allow you to throttle bandwidth to something lower than what you are using. Charles has a native way to do it, but I think you either have to program or download a new "rule" for Fiddler in order to throttle. Anyway, both are extremely valuable for solving a multitude of problems, not just throttling bandwidth.

Try Fiddler

If you're going to investigate this, try using Fiddler (http://www.fiddlertool.com/). It's pretty much incredible, though it is Windows-only. It's .NET so maybe it could get Mono-ized without too much trouble.

Capcha: "unparsed" :)

There's a equivalent (free) tool for Internet Explorer called Fiddler. In addition to viewing HTTP traffic it has a framework for programatically 'fiddling' with requests and responses.

Ethereal will let you view HTTP traffic regardless of which browser you are using, however it takes a bit of getting used to.

Nonetheless, if you're using Firefox, LiveHTTPHeaders is definitely the way to go.

There's a equivalent (free) tool for Internet Explorer called Fiddler. In addition to viewing HTTP traffic it has a framework for programatically 'fiddling' with requests and responses.

Ethereal will let you view HTTP traffic regardless of which browser you are using, however it takes a bit of getting used to.

Nonetheless, if you're using Firefox, LiveHTTPHeaders is definitely the way to go.