WebScarab is a testing tool used for analysing application data that is passed between browsers and servers. It can be used to review and modify data at either end by intercepting data originating from http and https layers. This tool can also be used as a bandwidth simulator (slow/fast network), in session id analysis, spidering url's, parameter analysis and for many other testing schemes. WebScarab is developed as an open source tool by The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) and can be downloaded from OWASP website

GUID stands for "Global Unique Identifier" and is a term usually referring to Microsoft's implementation of unique identity number (in a distributed environment) that it generates to identify different entities such documents, COM's, DLL's, interfaces, records, and other objects. It is also known as UUID - Universal Unique Identifier interchangeably. GUID implemenation is a 128 bit (16 byte) value consisting of sets of hexadecimal digits separated by hyphens. As the total number of unique keys is large the probability of two numbers being the same is very small. The AutoNumber datatype in MS-Access and the Identity datatype in SQL Server is a GUID implementation. (more…)

Firefox is one of the best tool available for web developers which equips the developer with code testing and debugging capabilities. There are many useful firefox options and extensions that comes in handy during software development life cycle and in this article we will be listing few of useful plugins that we commonly use. To find information related to the page that is getting displayed on the browser click Tools > Page info. This will give you permission settings of a page, security identity of the page, feed url and other page specific information like page content-type, encoding, meta tags used, cookie permission settings etc. Web Developer extension Added as a toolbar in firefox, this extension gives CSS related information, page information, outlines page elements, tab index, gives topographic information and many such details. (more…)

Points to consider before choosing the SSL certificate i) Strength of the encryption offered by the certificates ii) Browser comptability or recognition of the certificates. A well known brand is recognized by most of the browsers in the market iii) If the certificate offers backward comptability across browsers offering iv) Whether the Certification Authority (CA) is a Trusted Root or if they use a Chained Root Certificates. v) Which web server will be used for SSL installation. Chained root certificates may be little complicated on some web servers. vi) Nature of the application that will be served over the SSL - depending on the volume of the transactions and the value of each transaction vii) Warranty offered by the certificate (if that matters which most certainly is when it comes to ECommerce products)

UTF abbr. Unicode Transformation Format is a super set of characters that facilitates the display of characters from ALL languages that is currently in use. BOM stands for Byte Order Mark (also known as ZERO WIDTH NON-BREAKING SPACE) appearing at the beginning of a data stream to define the byte order (whether it is little endian or big endian). BOM is to indicate that the file is Unicode based. Possible problem caused by Byte Order Mark In IE6, it will send the dispaly into quirks mode with its presence before "<DOCTYPE ..." How to check the presence of BOM? View the source code of the page that does not display correctly in a user agent. Or, open the file in the editor which does not support UTF encoding to see the BOM's signature on the files. Suggestion If the user-agent gives problem when you program for multi-lingual websites, check the editor settings to see what format is being used for saving program files. Notepad++ has the option to convert files to UTF and to UTF without BOM. Use the appropriate settings to convert your files. A character set related tutorial on W3C site can be found here Byte Order Mark on Wiki Article on PHP and UTF

RFC 2616 - Section 3 states: "Servers should be cautious about depending on URI lengths above 255 bytes because some older client or proxy implementations may not properly support these lengths." Different browser agents support different URI length acceptance. In addition, servers too play a role in accepting/denying URI's over certain length which may either truncate the URI or may give lengthy URI message indications. It is always advisable to rely on shorter URI's and to post data when more field sets are to be transferred across web pages. POST data too has its limit. In this case, it is the size of the data which is controlled by the server settings. Some interesting discussions: Limit on query string GET URL parameters