Transcript QA And The IWMW Web Site: A Case Study

QA And The IWMW Web Site: A
Case Study (flaws and all)
Brian Kelly
UKOLN
University of Bath
Bath, BA2 7AY
Email
[email protected]
URL
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
UKOLN is supported by:
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
The IWMW Web Site
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Aims Of Web Site
The aims of the Web site were:
• To provide information about the
workshop for participants, speakers, etc.
• To provide an online booking facility
• To act as a demonstrator of standards,
best practices and innovative solutions
Subject to the following constraints:
• No Content Management System
• Limited time
• Limited software development / design
expertise
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Approach
The approach taken was to continue to use:
• The design and structure used for previous two
workshops
• The HTML-Kit authoring tool to edit HTML files
• The Xenu link checker
Innovations this year include:
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Use of HTML and CSS validation icons
Provide an XHTML Web site
Make greater use of CSS
Provide a dynamically-generated RSS news feed
Provide live usage statistics
Access to Web site on PDAs using AvantGo
Is this approach typical of yours – incremental development of an existing
Web site,Aand
newinformation
featuresmanagement
and more up-to-date standards?
centreintroducing
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Tools
HTML-kit is my
preferred editor
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The XHTML and
CSS icons act as
live links
The SiteMeter
icon gives
realtime info on
usage www.ukoln.ac.uk
Problems
Some problems:
• When updating pages, links, HTML and spelling
were not checking systematically
• When using the HTML and CSS checker the
browser could check an old, cached version
• At one stage the SiteMeter usage statistics
service was not available
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Validating In Batch
Checking (e.g. HTML and CSS validation,
links, accessibility, etc.) initial files is timeconsuming and, for large or continually
updated Web sites is not a scalable solution
Validation in batch:
• Familiar for link-checking
• Limited set of tools available for HTML validation
(e.g. HTML Validator Pro – see
<http://www.htmlvalidator.com/>
• Batch HTML validation validates files generated
from PowerPoint, over which I have no control
• Bobby batch accessibility check is now a licensed
application (but used copy downloaded in the
past)
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Maintenance
• When creating new pages, made use of existing
files and sometimes did not update the <TITLE>,
metadata, etc.
• The location of certain files was not obvious (the
size of the Web site has now outgrown the
original navigational links)
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Netscape (sigh)
User feedback revealed that:
• &pound; does not display in Netscape :-(
• The Suggestions text box and the Submit button
(!) were not displayed in Mozilla, due to failure to
support XHTML correctly
Suggestions
Submit
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RSS News Feed
The RSS News Feed:
• Provides a mechanism for syndication of content
• News feed can be viewed on other Web sites or
in other applications
The News Feed was created:
• By transforming (lightly structured) HTML from
the news page using a remote service
• A static version was also created in case of
problems with the live transformation
Problems:
• The remote service was not always available
• The static version was not always in sync with the
live version
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Online Bookings
The online booking forms:
• Were used for booking for the workshop and
choosing the parallel sessions
The backend processing:
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• Is not yet fully automated to store the information
in a database
• Confirmation page did not echo the user’s data
• When users followed link to check session, input
data may have been lost
• Crashed on surnames with spaces and accents
• No validation was performed
Despite messages on acknowledgements page, some
A
centre ofstill
expertise
in digital information
management
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users
expected
a separate
email confirmation
What Should Be Done
Some simple things can be done for next time:
• Use of SSIs or a CMS (or equivalent ) to manage
resource fragments
• Improve the online booking system to provide:
• Validation (which will save time in administration)
• Display of user input
• Separate confirmation of entry into database
But should I:
• Recognise that minor typos, etc. will happen and,
as long as they are not critical, can be tolerated?
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What About The Processes?
What QA processes were used?
• Automated tools
• Peer review from members of the organising
committee
• Alternating between Opera, IE and Mozilla when
working on Web site
• Viewing the Web site on my Palm to:
• Allow me to work on the bus, train, etc.
• See how the Web site works on a low-spec device
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What Else Should I Do?
Additional processes I should employ:
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Reviewing by users
Peer-reviewing (others in similar situation)
Analysis of logs (esp. failure logs)
Usability testing
Multiple browser testing
Test data with unusual entries for online forms
Post-workshop review of Web site
Systematic documentation of successes and failures
Make case for extra resources, software, etc. to
implement improvements
• Documenting the architecture of the Web site
• Documenting the limitations of the Web site
• Preparing these slides!
• of…expertise in digital information management
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Questions
Any questions?
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