I've used programs like "Multiproxy" that interact with a web browser through certain browser proxy connections ( one would set their browser's proxy connection to 127.0.0.1 and port number to 8088 , or something like that ). How do these programs interact with a web browser ( is this a "socket programming" application ? ) ? I'm curious as to what would be required to write something like this. Any ideas?
In effect the way they interact with the web browser is no different from the way your browser interacts with any server. If the proxy was on my machine you would merely set your proxy setting to my IP address instead of 127.0.0.1. Same as if the proxy was located at google.com.
Strictly speaking the proxy doesn't interact with you web browser specifically. Rather you have configured your web browser to interact with the proxy, and it makes no difference where that proxy is located. When you request a page, like yahoo.com, rather than your browser getting the page, your browser is now configured to ask the proxy to get the page for your browser. Yahoo.com then only sees what the proxy asked for, rather than what your browser asked for. Many people can configure their browser to use the same proxy.
Beyond that I'm not sure what the confusion might be from the question you asked.
I was looking for sort of an outline of how I might write something like this ( what API calls are involved , etc ). Thanks for any information on this topic! :t