[WEB4LIB] testing web pages- a question

[Chris Gray]

Juggle a number of factors to suit taste and circumstances.

The general principles are:

0) KISS principle.  Somebody needs to rewrite Strunk and White for the
Web.  If you stick to the HTML code that even Lynx can understand and work
on giving your pages good content, clear structure, and robust code,
you'll find it hard to go wrong.  These are values that can't be erased by
technological advancement.  ("Website designers can help improve user
confidence by prioritizing quality and robustness over features and the
latest technology." --Jakob Nielsen)

1) Head toward standards.  Standards are aimed at getting us out of having
to worry about these questions.  Validate and forget it.  _If_ you can
manage it, write to strict W3C standards with graceful degradation in
mind.  ("You can't always do what you're supposed to do" --Arlo Guthrie)  
The more we gently but firmly insist on standards the better the situation
will become.  (The extreme form of this is A List Apart's To Hell With Bad
Browsers attitude.)

2) The needs of _your_ users.  If you're serving a population that's still
using Cello and NCSA Mosaic, you'd better test with those.  If you are
obliged to serve people who need adaptive technology, you'd better test
with that.

3) The 20/80 rule, or "ars longa, vita brevis".   Surely, there are better
uses for our time than testing Web pages for every browser under the sun.
("There's not much more that you can do.  Go on and get some rest." --Paul
Simon)

Chris Gray
Systems Analyst
University of Waterloo Library

On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Drew, Bill wrote:

> I want to thank everyone for their help in testing my web page.  I have a
> general question aimed at when a page has been tested enough.
> 
> I have gotten the page to work in Netscape4.77 and higher, IE5 and higher,
> Mozilla 1.0, Opera 6.04, Kmeleon, and also Lynx.  I am getting input from
> people using really buggy browser versions such as Netscape 4.03 and older.
> 
> Where do I stop and say that is it?  What browser version do I cut off at?
> 
> Wilfred (Bill) Drew
> Associate Librarian, Systems and Reference
> SUNY Morrisville College Library
> E-mail: mailto:drewwe at morrisville.edu
> AOL Instant Messenger:BillDrew4
> BillDrew.Net: http://billdrew.net/
> Wireless Librarian: http://people.morrisville.edu/~drewwe/wireless/
> Not Just Cows:http://people.morrisville.edu/~drewwe/njc/
> Library: http://library.morrisville.edu/
> SUNYConnect: http://www.sunyconnect.suny.edu/
> SUNY Morrisville College: America's Most Wired 2 Year College - 2001, 2000
> Books just wanna be FREE! See what I mean at:
> http://www.bookcrossing.com/referral/BillDrew 
>