Transcript MS PowerPoint 97/2000 format

Quality Assurance
For Museum Web Sites:
Approaches To Checking
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
Approaches To Checking
Possible approaches:
•
•
•
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Use of automated testing tools
Manual testing
No testing – leave users to complain
No testing – the system gets it right
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Automated Testing
Automated testing:
• Has been demonstrated
• Is needed to check large Web sites
• Won't spot everything (e.g. Web site usability,
aesthetic issues, …)
• Be aware that automated tools may be flawed!
• Some link checkers only check <A HREF="…">
links and not external stylesheet or JavaScript
links linked with <LINK REL="…">
• Some tools are not aware of redirects and may
check the redirect message!
• Some tools are not aware of frames and may
check the frameset page only
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Manual Testing
Manual testing:
• Essential for testing usability, look-and-feel, etc.
• Useful to have an objective, neutral usability
testing framework
• May need to "incentivize" users to obtain
meaningful responses
But:
• Doesn't scale well
• Difficult to testing existing services
• Won't spot everything
• Subjective
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Ignore – Let User's Complain
"Who needs to bother with the cost and hassle
of formal testing? If anything goes wrong, the
user's will let me know!"
No!
• They will go elsewhere
• Your brand will suffer
But isn't this the default approach?
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Ignore – Our Technologies Work!
"We don't need to bother formal testing. Our
CMS templates comply with HTML and CSS
standards; we automatically check links, …"
Great! This is the direction we should be
aiming for.
But:
• The software may not be 100% correct
• Workflow issues may cause problems
• If the user's environment is flawed
(Netscape 4) they may still think your Web
site is broken 
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Conclusions
To conclude:
• Testing will be needed
But:
• What do we test?
• How often?
• How do we go about fixing things?
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E
Exercise
Try exercise 3 in your group
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