This page contains material from a presentation at the WAI Best Practices Exchange
Training in Madrid, Spain in February 2004.
Evaluating Complex Web Sites
Shadi Abou-Zahra, W3C
WAI
Last updated: 8 February 2004
Contents
- Sites with a large number of pages
- Sites with dynamically generated pages
- Sites with processes and trails
Sites with a large number of pages
- Examine templates, macros and authoring tools
- Authoring tools are the main source of faults
- An author is the root source for many pages
- Bugs in templates infest all related pages
- Examine a diverse sample of selected pages
- Include every template, macro, ...
- Select at least one page from each author
- Select at least one page from each layout
- Select different languages, tools, timestamps, ...
Example: Site with a large number of pages
Large organization with many sections and content authors
- At least two pages from each sections and author
- Coverage of as many elements and layouts as possible
- Busier sections or authors get more pages
- Pages with more elements or content have a raised priority
- Busier pages have a raised priority
Sites with dynamically generated pages
- Examine the content generating mechanisms
- Bad markup is probably generated repeatedly
- Bugs invoked by certain order of elements
- Examine possible ways to place backdoors
- Specimen forms that are already filled out
- URL can contain parameters to invoke requests
- Possibility of generating a database index
Example: Site with dynamically generated pages
A simple content management system that was developed in-house
- A script generates links with URL containing parameters
- URL would invoke a request as if a form was filled out
- Search engine uses this index page to capture the content
- Evaluation tool was used to also crawl these links
- For security, only local application could access this page
Sites with process trails
- Examine the entire process trail
- All possible paths within a trail must be covered
- Error messages and dialogs should not be neglected
- Examine state tracking mechanisms
- Client-Side scripts must be redundant on the server
- Provide alternate solutions (Cookies, URL, Server Cache)
- Don't assume non-standard browsers functionality
Example: Site with a process trail
Registering to receive a newsletter was a three-step process
- Content of the pages rarely changes so it was only evaluated once
- Evaluation needed to cover all output possibilities (errors etc.)
- Help pages were considered as part of the trial and evaluated
- Especially error messages and dialogs contained most issues