Testing Your Site

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Testing Your Site
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Testing Your Site
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Errors are good!

• If you create a system and tell me that you
  tested it and found no problems I simply wont
  believe you
• In documenting your testing I expect you to state
  clearly what errors you found and what you did
  about them in your test logs

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When to Test

• Formative testing
• Testing during development
• Summative testing
• Testing after development
• Imagine a chef making soup
• The formative stage is the chef tasting the soup
  as they make it
• The summative phase is when the customer tastes
  it

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Why do we test?

• To find faults or errors with the code
• Establish accessibility
• Understand the level of usability
• We need to have our designs viewed through fresh
  eyes to see the things that are hard to see
  ourselves

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What do we test?

• For the sake of this lecture I shall split
  testing into three types
• System testing
• Accessibility testing
• Usability testing

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System Testing

• You will need to consider issues such as the
  following
• Is your code correct? Validation broken links
• Does your design work on different browsers?
• Does your design work at different screen
  resolutions?
• How does your design behave on different computer
  platforms?

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Is your code correct?

• Tools in DreamWeaver
• Validate your XHTML by pressing Shift F6
• Link checker shift F8 (ctrl F8 for the site)
• Test your links on a friends machine!
• Clean up XHTML
• Site Reports
• Spell Check (Set to British not American)

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Platform Tests

• Different browsers. (Internet Explorer, Firefox,
  Opera)
• Different Screen Resolutions (Design for liquid
  layout, use percentage values in positioning)
• Different operating systems? (PC, MAC, Unix)

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Browsers

• Browser usage for the faculty dated 19th Oct 2008

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Browser Wars

• Early 1990s and following
• Netscape
• Internet Explorer (Given away for free)
• The marquee tag Microsoft only tag
• Need for CSS XHTML not good for layout
• World Wide Web Consortium http//www.w3.org

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Resolution Testing

• At least change the browser window size
• Change the resolution on your machine

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Accessibility

• Some questions
• Do all of your images have an alt tag?
• Does your site work without the colours? (Rename
  your style sheet to test this.)
• Can you still navigate your site if flash doesnt
  work?

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Usability Testing

• Usability may be defined by the following
  questions
• How easy is the site to learn?
• How quickly are tasks performed?
• How easy is it to remember how to use the site?
• How many errors does a user make?
• Is the user satisfied with the experience?

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Usability Testing

• Who to use?
• How many test subjects?

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Approaches to Testing

• Focus Groups
• Testing the Paper Based Design
• Card Sorting
• Design an Experiment
• Planning Test Scenarios
• Give the subjects a specific task
• Avoid Polluting the Test