As network tracing is so critical for web based applications, I thought it helpful to point out Fiddler’s useful capability for testing your applications.  Hopefully this information will help move things along. The good thing is that this will work for all future releases, so you can keep the tool installed and just change the Virtual Earth control endpoint to test against.

Testing Virtual Earth using Fiddler

You can use the following steps to quickly check what a customer’s  application/site will look like using a different URL without making any code changes (or any versions of VE for that matter).

1. Install Fiddler from here.

2. Open Fiddler. In the menu, click on Rules->Customize Rules

3. Search for OnBeforeRequest(oSession: Session) in the file that opens

4. Add the following in this function after the brace {

if ((oSession.url.toLowerCase()==”dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/vX/mapcontrol.js”) || (oSession.url.toLowerCase()==”dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=X″)) {

  oSession.url = “DEV.VIRTUALEARTH.NET/MAPCONTROL/mapcontrol.ashx?V=X+1”;

}

5. Save the file and close it

6. Leave Fiddler open.

7. Clear the browser cache.

8. Go to the customer’s  application/site.  You should see DEV.VIRTUALEARTH.NET/MAPCONTROL/mapcontrol.ashx?V=X+1 in your Fiddler HTTP sessions list.