IBM Page Detailer

IBM Page Detailer is a small software application able to monitor webpages and provide information about the timing, size and identity of each item in a webpage. It comes in handy especially for web developers, designers and IP specialists that need to identify areas where the performance can be improved.

How it works

The program attaches to the TCP/IP workstation and automatically monitors all HTTP and HTTPS protocol-based communications between your web browser and network.
By default, the utility is able to monitor HTTP/HTTPS and DNS activity for Internet Explorer. IBM Page Detailer has the capabilities of monitoring HTTP/HTTPS and DNS activity for any application that uses Windows Sockets. A small inconvenience is that you need to manually locate the INI file and add the name of the executable programs that you want to monitor.

User interface

IBM Page Detailer keeps a list with the scanned webpages and reveals information about each one with the aid of two view modes (Chart and Details). You can easily switch between the two view modes thanks to the multi-tabbed layout.

Revealing information with the aid of charts and detailed view mode

The Chart panel displays a series of color-coded bar charts which reveal a graphical representation of all items that make up a single webpage, while the Details window shows information about each item on a page, such as name of the item taken from the HTTP request header or DNS request, duration, and size.
In addition, the tool reveals a legend with the significance of each color used in charts. For example, blue stands for host name resolution, green for delivery and brown for errors.

Enable extra monitoring parameters

Last but not least, you can add columns for monitoring new parameters, such as local IP and port, protocol, URL, remote IP and port, socket ID and type, hostname, connection duration, server response duration and offset, address family, and reply header.

Bottom line

All things considered, IBM Page Detailer offers a straightforward software solution for helping you evaluate the webpage performance. On the downside, it hasn’t been updated for a long time, so it proves to quite useful especially if you are the owner of an old operating system such as Windows XP, Vista or 7.