monitor https based service

[jing ping]

Hello,
 
I want to use Monit to monitor a https based service.  From manual of Monit, there're two ways to configure my test.
 
1. Connection testing via networked ports
check process myproc with pidfile /var/run/myproc.pid
  if failed port 8443 type TCPSSL 
    using TLSV1
    certmd5 12-34-56-78-90-AB-CD-EF-12-34-56-78-90-AB-CD-EF
    protocol HTTP request http://localhost/testpage 
 then ...
  
2. Connection testing using the URL notation
check process myproc with pidfile /var/run/myproc.pid
  if failed url
      https://localhost:8443/?querystring
  then ...
 
My have three questions about this.
1. Are the configuration items I wrote above correct?
2. Referring the ways listed above, which one is better for my case?
3. In the 1st way, the client could check the finger-print of certificate of the SSL server. In the 2nd way, it seems I can't designate the SSL version and how the client validates the server's certificate. In both ways, if the tested SSL server requires to authenticate the SSL client, how to configure the certifcate of the client?
 
Thanks,
 
Jing