HTTP Werkzeug is an HTTP send/receive tool, which lets make requests to Web servers and view the HTTP headers and data sent and received.

Version 2 is a refresh of 1.3. The program is now only available for Microsoft Windows, so Mac-related aspects of the program are removed. The interface has been simplified for ease of maintenance and to remove unnecessary quirks. No settings from 1.x are read in (this includes cookies, credentials and history), as the program uses the new XML configuration file format and support for the binary preferences file format was stripped out.

Version 2 is subject to the same caveats as SMTP Werkzeug.

Orientation guide

New features

• HTTP response headers are syntax-highlighted
• Disc write status is indicated via an icon
• The Credentials window is now a regular window instead of a dialog box
• The cookie list in the Cookie Jar window can now be sorted
• If the Content-Type HTTP header indicates that the character set is UTF-8, the page content is decoded accordingly (other content types can be added upon request); the character set is not read from the HTML header, and decoding is skipped if the Content-Encoding or Transfer-Encoding headers are set
• The IP address is shown in the window title as a diagnostic aid

Removed features

• Capture windows are gone; browsers now have sufficient debugging of their own as to render this feature redundant
• Multiple request windows are no longer implemented
• Response headers are no longer shown in a separate field, as the code required to support the UI for this was terrible
• History autocomplete is removed; history is now implemented as a plain combo box, something that was not available in the version of REALbasic used to build the original

Other changes

• config.txt no longer exists; the default User-Agent strings are built-in and are copied to the preferences file on first run, and thereafter may be edited directly from the the preferences file

Fixes

• An attempt to avoid weird transient hangs during IP address lookup
• Declining to save an existing credential when authenticating, deletes it from the credentials manager after successful authentication instead of leaving it there
• Credentials were always added to the credentials window regardless of the user’s choice.

Licence

• HTTP Werkzeug and my associated code library is licensed under the terms of the zLib license.