Testing your Site
A very important final step before you officially publish your
website is to test it thoroughly. This stage takes a lot of work
and is often overlooked. Your website may look good to you on your
computer, but it might look terrible on another computer with slightly
different  settings.
The purpose of testing your site is to see how your website will
look to all visitors, regardless of what computer or browser they
are using.
As a rule, the less complicated you make your site, the more likely
it will look consistent on different computer systems. Just because
you can put something on your website does not mean you should.
For example, if your site has a QuickTime video in it, many visitors
will have to download the QuickTime plug-in for their browser before
they can see the video. Many people won’t bother to do that.
The same goes for sound. Not everybody will have speakers installed
and working on their computer, and their browsers may not support
sound anyway.
Some people even turn off JavaScript in their browsers for security
reasons. This means that any JavaScript in your browser will not
show in their browser. Remember that when you use any JavaScript
on your site.
Testing Checklist
Here is a list of what you need to check:
1. Each page on your site has a small enough file size (and downloading
time). You can see this information in the bottom right corner of
each page in Dreamweaver. It tells you the file size and the number
of seconds it will take to download on a 33k modem. (You can change
the speed of the modem in Edit > Preferences
> Validator.)
2. The website looks good with different computer monitor resolutions,
(800*600 and 1024*768). Check to see if you have used a font or
image that looks too big or small, and that your tables are not
too wide or narrow. To change the resolution of your monitor:
I. Right-click on your Desktop.
II. Choose Properties.
III. Select Settings.
IV. In the Screen Resolution section, move the
slider bar left or right.
V. Click Apply and OK. Your
screen will change. If it asks you if you want to keep that setting,
choose Yes.
VI. Go back and look at your site under the new resolution.
3. The contrast between your text color and background color is
strong enough for the text to be readable.
4. The names of your sections and headings are descriptive and meaningful.
5. Navigation is clear and easy to use.
6. All words on every page are spelled correctly. To check this,
go to Text > Check Spelling
on each page.
7. All font styles and sizes are showing up properly (i.e. you don’t
have too many different styles).
8. Pictures and text are aligned properly.
9. All images have alt tags.
10. Visitors know what page they are on.
11. All pages have page titles.
12. All links on the site work, and they go where they are supposed
to go. In the Site Map, go to File
> Check Links. In the window that comes up,
next to Show, choose External Links
and click the green “play” button.
13. Your HTML code throughout the site is accurate, has no incomplete
tags, etc. You can check the code of your site using the Clean
Up HTML feature. Find it under Commands
> Clean Up HTML.
14. Your whole site works properly on both Netscape 4.x and 6.x
and Internet Explorer browsers. To get these, go to
www.tucows.com and do a search. Download and install these browsers
and then visit your page.
15. Have other people look at your website and ask them for advice.
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