While deploying a site may not give you really big headaches, keeping it up can surely do that, no matter how reliable may be the server(s) used to host that site. Being able to send custom HTTP requests and view the responses in a timely manner can help troubleshooting a Web-based project a lot, and that’s exactly what hurl does!
To be more accurate, we’re talking about another online service designed to help Web developers, and since it’s also free, I don’t see any reason for those involved in building (but especially troubleshooting) various sites to stay away from hurl.
The story is very short, because all you have to do is open the page, enter any URL you need to check, then add any number of headers to the request, define user-pass for HTTP authentication, as well as to choose setting the request to follow redirects… or not. At last, you can even sign up and save the requests-responses for future comparison. Pretty cool, if you ask me… don’t you agree? 😉
Compatibility: any major browser – after all this is a very basic tool, and I had no problems playing with it in Safari, IE, Opera, or Chrome (anyway, as usual, you should be careful about disabling script blockers)
