Telerik has just announced that it has acquired the Fiddler Web Debugger–a popular tool created to inspect web traffic and ‘fiddle’ with incoming or outgoing data. Besides getting the Fiddler tool, Telerik has also got the creator Eric Lawrence, who will join its testing tools division in Austin TX. The Fiddler Web Debugger tool debugs traffic from any application that supports a proxy, including all modern web browsers, is browser-agnostic, and lets developers see HTTP messages from any program.

Telerik has acquired the Fiddler product, and they’re going to keep it entirely free, add it to their Test Suite, and offer enterprise-level support for enterprise partners. But they will not be mucking much with the inner workings of the product itself for the free community and let the developer do his own thing with that.

“For the last 8+ years, Fiddler has been my passion. With this move, Telerik has given me the opportunity to make it 100 percent of my focus,” said Eric Lawrence. “We have great plans for the advancement of Fiddler including creating an improved user interface and enhanced support for popular platforms. Together, we’re committed to ensuring the developer community has a top-quality tool that’s free to use and is fully-supported by enterprise investment.”

Telerik has been in the news for several other reason too, such as full support for the Microsoft Visual Studio 2012. Telerik revealed that it has moved swiftly and in lockstep with Microsoft, updating its developer tools portfolio to offer full support of the IDE for .NET developers, giving them the ability to build apps on Microsoft’s most modern platforms and devices.

“With this update, Telerik may not be dramatically changing their products–as they already used the Fiddler core–but they will be advancing the capabilities they already have,” says Kyt Dotson DevOpsANGLE editor. “By buying into the Fidder app, it will enhance their product in the future with much more advanced client-to-server testing features, also, as a cherry-on-top, by keeping it free and open source, they will be adding to the community.

“Eric Lawrence will be able to continue to produce an amazing product, increasing the test suite capabilities for Telerik while at the same time enhancing the overall developer community. Such a good neighborly act by a mobile development company shouldn’t be overlooked.”

Chris Eyhorn, EVP of Telerik’s Testing Tools, also spoke with SiliconANGLE to add that the Fiddler community is very important and that’s why they’ve decided to allow the testing program to remain a stand alone product. As a result, the Fiddler community will reap the benefits of having corporate-level development churning in its wheels while at the same time not losing its home grown charm. It also means that enterprise-level clients will be able to get support for Fiddler from Telerik without locking out developers who grew up on the free tool.

Telerik also released a major update to the Kendo UI, with several new features, like support for tablet U and server-side wrappers for ASP.NET MVC, which will enable developers to quickly build rich, native-like, and simplify development of HTML5 and JavaScript mobile apps and sites. Finally, Telerik unveiled a beta testing tool for iOS that can be downloaded directly from the App Store, with aim to simplify beta testing and customer feedback by making it a straight-forward process for developers and end users alike.