Test Your Site

[StubbyD]

This is a cool little site I just found

http://sitescore.silktide.com/

You enter your website and it runs some tests and then gives you a score. It has a British slant but is still good.

My sites got low'ish scores - no surprise there - but it was cool to see that I have been complying with the requirements of the Disability Act (came into being in 2005) for at last 6yrs.

[Faithhb_lutheran]

That's sort of cool, going through each one of the W3C test one by one can take some time.

[GuruGreg]

I was using that and keeping a script on my sites that reported my sitescores, but I recently took it off all of them. It was useful for finding when some of my blog content caused my page to no longer be validated (and my scores would drop whole points), but there are a number of bugs in their scripts that would do things like tell me I had a page with no content for a page that didn't exist (not even a link anywhere on my site...I checked everywhere).

I also didn't really see any value that it added to my sites, unless I was one of those top 10 sites they list on their main page. So, I decided it really didn't matter all that much.

But if you're interested in these kinds of tools, I'd also recommend SEOmoz's Page Strength Tool (http://www.seomoz.org/tools/page-strength.php). That one has a bit more of a search engine optimization spin to it.

[flutem3]

I just thought it was fun to see what would come up. It turns out the site doesn't have many visitors. :) You know, it is the funniest thing. I already knew that. The web site received a better score than I thought it might, 5.5. I don't know whether that means anything except in terms of keeping track, in a broad sense, of changes in a web site. And it would be the same measure each time. Each time it would have the same biases which were built into the tool from day one...but at least they are consistent. People tend to think that a tool of this nature is neutral. It is only as neutral as the people who created it. But none the less, it is fun.

Carol

[JackWolfgang]

Microsoft has released a Virtual PC image to allow you to test your sites in IE6 even if you downloaded IE7.

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/11/30/ie6-and-ie7-running-on-a-single-machine.aspx

I have not tried this yet, but I intend to this evening.

[flutem3]

Hi, Jack and Everyone,

I downloaded IE 7, but nothing looks different at all. I typed in IE7 in my search of the computer and a bunch of files came up. However, nothing has changed. According to what I am hearing from others, I should see a difference. Is it possible that the execute order or something of that nature didn't load? I am not certain that is what I mean, but I mean something like that.

Thanks!!

Carol

[JackWolfgang]

Hi, Jack and Everyone,

I downloaded IE 7, but nothing looks different at all. I typed in IE7 in my search of the computer and a bunch of files came up. However, nothing has changed. According to what I am hearing from others, I should see a difference. Is it possible that the execute order or something of that nature didn't load? I am not certain that is what I mean, but I mean something like that.

Thanks!!

Carol

IE7 does look very different. The first difference you will see is subtle. The logo for IE7 is the standard blue "e", but instead of having a blue ring/"orbit", it has a gold one. Note that some shortcuts may not be updated with the new icon.

Then there's the actual program. As you can see below, Microsoft redesigned the user interface (taking lots of cues from Firefox). The new IE7 interface now includes tabbed browsing (under the address) and an integrated search box (to the right of the address). Also, the menus in IE7 have moved from along the top where they defaulted to in IE6 (and Firefox and most other Windows programs) to under the search box in IE7. There are other differences, but I am going to let the pictures do their jobs (they are after all worth a thousand words).

This is a screen shot of IE7 running on Windows XP in the "XP mode" (as opposed to the classic mode that I normally run in):
http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=12&stc=1&d=1246595241


This is a screen shot of IE7 running on Windows XP in the "XP mode":
http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=13&stc=1&d=1246595241

Edit: Two credits where credit is due. The images are hosted on Google's Google pages service. (Google Pages is shutting down, and I am in the process of migrating the image files. The image files are now attached to this post.) The IE screen shots are from the Virtual PC download that I mentioned previously in this thread. If you have a newer Windows computer that will run Virtual PC, I would recommend the download. The only problem with the IE6 Virtual PC download Microsoft is offering is that it expires on 30 March 2007 and will be useless after that date.