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Testing Your Web Site
When you’ve completed a draft of a Web site, it’s critical that you conduct tests to validate the site’s usability and technical accuracy. Usability testing is a complicated, intensive process, but you can make your technical check simple—and free—by taking advantage of free tools on the Web. There are three basic categories of free tools:
Validators
These tools are designed to double-check the coding of your Web pages by ensuring that your coding is accurate and complete; your links all work; and your pages will display well across different types of browsers, machines, operating systems, and modem speeds. These services work by allowing you to enter the URL of your site; each tool then scans your site and creates a report, so you’ll need to upload your site to a publicly available server before using these services. Among the many options you have in this category are the following:
- Bobby. This site is designed to help authors identify problems in their pages that may make them less readable by individuals with disabilities. Bobby is also available as a free-to-download software application.
- Jim Tools. This site offers tools to validate HTML codes; test your pages using different browsers, platforms, and screen sizes; and verify download times.
- Lynx Viewer. This site allows you to view your site as it will appear in the text-only Lynx browser.
- NetMechanic Maintenance Tools. This site offers tools to check for dead and broken links, determine the loading speed of your pages, and target and eliminate problematic HTML coding.
- W3C HTML Validation Service. This is WWW Consortium’s HTML validation site, which checks HTML for errors and inconsistencies.
Optimizers
These tools are designed to help ensure that your pages—especially your graphics—are as streamlined as possible for your user’s viewing. Some of these tools require you to upload graphics to a server so they can be accessed, but many optimizers also allow you to upload graphics directly into their pages. Among the many options are the following:
- GIF Cruncher. This tool takes an image from your hard drive or from the Web and compresses it as much as possible by eliminating unneeded colors from the color palette.
- JPEG Wizard. This tool optimizes JPEGs instead of GIFs, but otherwise has a very similar function to the GIF Cruncher.
- ColorMix. This tool helps you create images with colors that are optimized for display on Web pages.
Positioners
These tools are designed to help you situate your site on the Web—in other words, to register your site with search engines in a way that ensures that people will find it. Among the many options are the following:
- Jim Tools. Jim Tools offers both a submission service that automatically submits your site to dozens of search engines, and a search-engine analysis that reports your site’s traffic statistics.
- Dream Submit. Offers free submission to over 50 search engines.
- NetMechanic Site Promotion. Provides a sophisticated analysis of the position of your Web site and helps you select keywords and search-engine strategies.