Enabling - Glimpse/Glimpse GitHub Wiki

Glimpse is designed to be secure by default. This means that unless you tell Glimpse otherwise, you can only access Glimpse from localhost.

Note, this means that you wont be able to access Glimpse remotely whilst this policy is in place.

Additionally, Glimpse will only listen to requests that you indicate you want targeted. You indicate this by setting a specific cookie. This can easily be set in the /glimpse.axd. More details can be found on working with Runtime Policies here.

Glimpse can be enabled and disabled on the server in the web.config file. Set the defaultRuntimePolicy to On, as shown below, to enable Glimpse:

<glimpse defaultRuntimePolicy="On" endpointBaseUri="~/Glimpse.axd"/>

In addition, defaultRuntimePolicy can be set to Off to completely disable Glimpse. When Glimpse is turned to Off, Glimpse completely removes itself from the execution pipeline.

A common use case here is use web.config transforms to control whether Glimpse is enabled in different environments. For example:

web.config

<glimpse defaultRuntimePolicy="On" endpointBaseUri="~/Glimpse.axd"/>

web.release.config

<glimpse defaultRuntimePolicy="Off" xdt:Transform="SetAttributes(defaultRuntimePolicy)"/>

Each developer on a project can control when Glimpse appears by turning Glimpse on and off in the browser - by default, Glimpse is off.

To turn Glimpse on, browse to the endpointBaseUri, which defaults to http://{your-site}/Glimpse.axd and click the "Turn Glimpse On" button. Return back to http://{your-site}/ and Glimpse will be running in the lower right corner of the web application.

Glimpse can be turned off at the endpointBaseUri as well, just click the "Turn Glimpse Off" button on that page.

The buttons on the endpointBaseUri page can be used as bookmarklets to simplify turning Glimpse on and off.

• In Firefox drag the button onto your bookmarks toolbar or choose 'Bookmark This Link' from the right click context menu on the button.
• In Chrome drag the button onto your bookmarks toolbar.
• In Internet Explorer 9 drag the button onto your bookmarks toolbar or choose 'Add to favorites' from the right click context menu on the button. Set the 'Create in' drop down to 'Favorites Bar'.