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Web Design

This website demonstrates using wikis as teaching and learning tool.

The course instructor is happy to share the teaching materials here with those who find it readable.

Tutorial /

HTTP Headers

Introduction: Install the Live HTTP Headers (Add-ons for Firefox). Carry out the following activities to study more about HTTP headers.

Activity One: Server

  • Find the web server used (name and version) for the following websites:
(Q1) www.ouhk.edu.hk
(Q2) ole.ouhk.edu.hk
(Q3) www.microsoft.com.hk

Activity Two: count HTTP Requests

  • Find the total number of HTTP requests sent when you access the following webpages:
(Q4) www.gov.hk
(Q5) www.ouhk.edu.hk

Activity Three: WWW-Authenticate and Authorization

  • Access the following webpage: plbpc013.ouhk.edu.hk/pma/, input an username and password to try to access it. At last, click cancel to finish the try.
(Q6) Why does your browser know that it is a password-protected webpage (Which response header) ?
(Q7) What does your browser send when it tries to access the webpage with the username and password (Which request header)?

Activity Four: Cache Mechanism

  • Access the following webpage: www.findaway.hk/images/primaryschool/ps199.jpg
  • Reload the page, and study the HTTP headers.
(Q8) What does your browser send to allow the use of cached content it has got previously?
  • Now, press down the shift key and click the refresh button of your browser. Then study the change of the HTTP headers.
(Q9) What does your browser send to enforce that no cache will be used?
(Q10) What is the Etag value of the above resources? When will it be changed?

Activity Five: Referer

  • Access the following webpage: www.stepwise.hk. Study the HTTP headers.
(Q11) What is the referer when your browser retrieve the resource: www.stepwise.hk/_content/wdwiki-logo.png
  • Now, access the above image by directly inputting the URL: http://www.stepwise.hk/_content/wdwiki-logo.png
(Q12) What is the referer now?

Activity Six: Referer from search engines

  • Go to a search engine and input some search term.
  • Study the HTTP headers when you click one of the search results.
(Q13) What is the referer when your browser retrieve the result webpage?

Activity Seven: Cookie

  • Log in to your Facebook account. Study the HTTP headers.
(Q14) How does the server remember that you have been logged in to access other resources of Facebook?

Activity Eight: HTTP POST

(Q15) What is also be submitted apart from HTTP request headers? What is the length of that content?

Activity Nine: Redirect

  • Access the following website: ole.ouhk.edu.hk
(Q16) What is the redirect page?

Activity Ten: Forbidden

  • Access the following webpage: paper.wenweipo.com/2010/01/18/. Study the HTTP headers.
(Q17) What are the differences among 401 Unauthorized, 403 Forbidden and 404 Not Found in accessing a web page?

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Page last modified on November 24, 2011, at 06:08 PM