QA And The IWMW Web Site A Case

QA And The IWMW Web Site: A Case Study (flaws and all) Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath, BA 2 7 AY Email B. Kelly@ukoln. ac. uk 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 A centre of expertise in digital information management 2 www. ukoln. ac. uk

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 A centre of expertise in digital information management 3 www. ukoln. ac. uk

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: • • • 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 Avant. Go Is this approach typical of yours – incremental development of an existing Web site, and introducingdigital information management up-to-date standards? A centre of expertise in new features and more www. ukoln. ac. uk 4

Tools HTML-kit is my preferred editor The XHTML and CSS icons act as live links The Site. Meter icon gives realtime info on usage A centre of expertise in digital information management 5 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 Site. Meter usage statistics service was not available A centre of expertise in digital information management 6 www. ukoln. ac. uk

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 Power. Point, over which I have no control • Bobby batch accessibility check is now a licensed application (but used copy downloaded in the past) A centre of expertise in digital information management 7 www. ukoln. ac. uk

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) A centre of expertise in digital information management 8 www. ukoln. ac. uk

Netscape (sigh) User feedback revealed that: • £ 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 A centre of expertise in digital information management 9 www. ukoln. ac. uk

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 A centre of expertise in digital information management 10 www. ukoln. ac. uk

Online Bookings The online booking forms: • Were used for booking for the workshop and choosing the parallel sessions The backend processing: 11 • 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 expected a separate email confirmation www. ukoln. ac. uk users expertise in digital information management

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? A centre of expertise in digital information management 12 www. ukoln. ac. uk

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 A centre of expertise in digital information management 13 www. ukoln. ac. uk

What Else Should I Do? Additional processes I should employ: • • • 14 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! • … A centre of expertise in digital information management www. ukoln. ac. uk

Questions Any questions? A centre of expertise in digital information management 15 www. ukoln. ac. uk