Why Is Website Testing Important
There are so many programs to build websites to be posted on the World Wide Web or Internet. But before the finished product is ready for public viewing and usage it has to be tested. This is where Website Testing comes in. Here is an over-view of what you can do to test your website for browser readiness. Once your get your URL (example, http: www.yourname.com) for your site and the web server (one who hosts your site), you are ready to test your site. The first thing you want to check on the Website Testing list of to do’s is checking the site’s HTML. HTML or Hyper Text Mark-UP Language is the code syntax or authorizing language used in creating web pages to be viewed on the World Wide Web. When you look at your pages for the first time in your own browser, it may ignore errors, but not so on the web and on other people’s browsers. You want to make sure you have valid HTML so people can see what you put up. W3C validator at http://validator.w3.org and WDG validator at; http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/ checks your HTML for free for errors. If there is a problem with the HTML these programs will let you know so you can correct it to have your website up and running. The next thing you want to do with your Website Testing is to look at CSS validation. CSS is the code on the page that provides the ability to separate various elements of the pages layout. It separates the headers from the links, colors, spacing etc. It is called the Cascading Style Sheet. The reason for testing this when testing your web site is the same for Website Testing the HTML. You want to be able to see the page that you worked on without problems in the browser. You can test the CSS with the WC3 CSS validator. It is also a free service on line. The address is: http://www.jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator.html#validate-by-uri Next in your Website Testing is testing for broken links. You don’t want links that don’t work on your site. That turns people away when links don’t work. Two tools that are good for link testing are: Xenulinx located at: http://www.home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html which tests the whole site, and Link Valet for checking a few pages at; http://www.valet.webthing.com/link/. You want to test your site for download speed. This is crucial in Website Testing. Now days people don’t want to wait for a page to load and will not go back to the site if it loads too slowly. Don’t overload your page with too much graphics so it will decrease the speed time of loading. If it takes 10 seconds to load you need to figure out what is the source of the load problem. If you have particularly large graphics then you need to warn your visitors perhaps with a window so they don’t get discouraged and leave. Also check for image size specifications, if you find your text is all over the place. You need to specify the width and height of your images so the browser can put the text in the right place. Finally in your Website Testing try your website in different browsers to see how it looks. Different browsers may give your website a different look that you may want to adjust. Print out your web pages so you can look at them that way as well. It may show something that was overlooked on the browser. This is a very general look at how to conduct Website Testing for your site. There are many online and off line programs and professional people that will do Website Testing for you for a fee. But even if you go the route of using a professional, this information will give you an idea of what they are doing when testing your site. |
