Preparation | Compatibility | Images | CSS | Testing | Rollout

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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.

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:

• Standard spelling and standard grammar

• Links go to the correct locations

• Pages, forms, graphics, applets and scripts display and behave correctly

• 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:

• 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)

• 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

• Use an accessibility validation tool such as Bobby

• 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

1. Gained input from users on your content

2. Asked users to organize the information at your site in a way that makes sense to them

3. Asked users to evaluate the visual style or metaphor for your site

4. 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:

• Users can find the information they need to find

• Users know where they are in the site structure

• Users can distinguish between static graphics and graphical links

• 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:

• HTML and HTML extensions (particularly HTML 3.2 extensions)

• JavaScript, Visual Basic Script, ActiveX and Java applets (use comments to hide script language, which sometimes appears in the view of older browsers)

• Table features, such as background colors in cells

• Page layout and default fonts