Testing with your Browsers

There are several things you should do when testing with web browsers. If you find you cannot get all the important content or you cannot navigate your site, then redesign it:

Test every page using the "Lynx" web browser. Make sure the pages read well as text-only pages, and no content is lost.
Turn off java, javascript, and automatic image loading. Go to an unrelated text-only page and clear your memory and disk caches. Then try to use your site.
Change your browser's default text colours to white text on a black background, then try to use your site. See if this interferes with transparent images or your default colour scheme. You may want to repeat this after specifying that your colours always override the page's colours. (Netscape Communicator users, you may want to make a special "user profile" for testing with these weird settings).
Change your point size to 32 point and see if the page still works properly.
Pretend you don't have any of the required plugins available to use your site. Can you easily download them?
Test with as many different browsers as possible. Make sure you haven't designed a page that only works in Netscape, or Microsoft Internet Explorer. Your web pages can take advantage of browser specific features, but only if the pages are still usable on other browsers too.
Test with as many different versions of browsers as possible. Can you still obtain all important content using Netscape version 2?

Please send comments about this course to Kevin.Lowey@Usask.CA