Final Testing
Make sure you
have provided clear error messages
If
an error occurs, users need to know why it occurred and what they can
do about it. If they receive a message only showing an error code
number, they will be confused. Purchase server software which allows
you to customize error messages.
![[sample error message]](images/error2.gif)
Stage the site
As individual files are developed, move them onto a
shared web server that is protected from public view. This will give
you more accurate performance test results than you would get testing
them on development workstations. It also allows the development
contributions of various team members to be seen by everyone and to be
evaluated in the context of the entire site.
Conduct quality
assurance test
There
should be a final check on the content to make sure nothing was missed
earlier. Ensure the following:
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Standard spelling and standard grammar |
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Links go to the correct locations |
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Pages, forms, graphics, applets and scripts
display and behave correctly |
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Pages print correctly (text does not bleed off
the page) |
Test to verify
accessibility
Test
your Web site to ensure that it will be accessible to users with
disabilities. To test for accessibility:
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View the page in a Web browser with various
display settings customized (e.g., disable images and see if the
page is still readable; enlarge the font and ensure that all text
scales to a larger size) |
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Print images and pages in black and white to see
if they are usable to people who are color blind or people who are
using a device without a color screen |
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Use an accessibility validation tool such as
Bobby |
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Observe vision-impaired users with screen readers
accessing content on your site, or blindfold yourself and access
your site with a screen reader such as IBM Home Page Reader |
Make any changes that testing reveals are
necessary. The IBM Web Accessibility Guidelines contain detailed
testing techniques for validating each accessibility checkpoint.
Conduct
performance testing
Generally,
a user with a 28.8 modem should have a sense of the page content or be
able to navigate off the page within 10 seconds of download. The rest
of the page should load within the next 30 seconds. Users may be
willing to wait longer for specific content such as, for example, an
online mortgage planner. Users tend to be less tolerant of slow
navigation pages.
Observe users
accomplishing a set of tasks
By
this point in the development process, you have already
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Gained input from users on your content
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Asked users to organize the information at your
site in a way that makes sense to them
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Asked users to evaluate the visual style or
metaphor for your site
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Asked users to find information in an early
version of your site
If the look of your site and/or its structure has
changed significantly since the early test of your navigation system,
you will need to re-test the navigation design. Ask users to
accomplish a set of tasks with all the pictures and text in place.
Verify that:
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Users can find the information they need to find
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Users know where they are in the site structure
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Users can distinguish between static graphics and
graphical links |
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Users are able to see important information
without scrolling |
Test in the
client environment
Web
pages can look and behave very differently depending on the browser,
operating system, system fonts, screen resolutions, and internet
connections. The appearance of colors can vary based on screen
resolution, color depth of users' monitors, and video card drivers.
The only sure way to get an accurate picture of how your site will
look to users is to view it in the varied situations that they will
view it.
Be sure to test your pages on all targeted browsers
platforms, and system settings. The following items in particular
behave differently across different browsers and browser versions:
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HTML and HTML extensions (particularly HTML 3.2
extensions) |
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JavaScript, Visual Basic Script, ActiveX and Java
applets (use comments to hide script language, which sometimes
appears in the view of older browsers) |
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Table features, such as background colors in
cells |
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Page layout and default fonts
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