Web Design All-in-One for Dummies®

Chapter 2: Testing, Accessibility,

Compliance, and Validation

In This Chapter

⻬ Checking your code for errors

⻬ Testing on different platforms and browsers

⻬ Fixing common code errors

⻬ Checking (X)HTML syntax

⻬ Making pages CSS, (X)HTML, and 508 accessibility compliant

⻬ Fixing noncompliant code issues

⻬ Displaying proof of code validation

C

ongratulations on making it this far! You’re almost to the finish line, and

you only have a few more things to do before you can publish your site

for all to see. At this stage, it’s time to put all the pages on your site through

a rigorous review to catch potential problems like spelling errors, code

issues, broken links, and missing code attributes like

alt text attributes for

images and

title attributes for hyperlinks.

In this chapter, you’ll find some helpful tips and suggestions

on validation, testing, standards compliancy, and more.

Most HTML code editors have tools to assist you with

testing your pages so that you can identify and fix any

problems before visitors have a chance to see the

site. For instance, in this chapter, you find out how

to use several testing tools, including ones that

clean up code and check spelling, and I discuss a

tool to find and replace text and source code

throughout a site. In addition, you discover how to

clean up redundant and unnecessary code, apply

uniform source formatting to pages, and fix some

common coding problems such as identifying broken

links and orphans.

A few examples in this chapter use Dreamweaver. However, if

you are using another program you should be able to find many similar

tools. For details about any specific tools, be sure to consult your applica-

tion’s Help guide.

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Understanding the Process of Validating Your Code

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Understanding the Process of Validating Your Code

When you take a patient and careful look at everything on your site, you can

usually find and fix any display and functionality issues before your pages

go online. That is not to say that the cleanup and validation process is a

breeze. On the contrary, site testing can be a demanding task at times. In

fact, it is quite common to find new coding issues at each phase of the vali-

dation and compliance testing process.

More than likely, however, what you will find is that performing the valida-

tion testing is relatively easy, and though it may take you some time to

research, retest, and fix any problems you find during the validation

process, the whole experience will enrich you and refine your skills, ulti-

mately making you a better designer for any future projects.

Validation offers many important benefits to both you and your site’s

visitors:

⻬ Validation makes a site more accessible to the widest audience, which

can translate into increased visitor traffic and potentially more sales of

products and services.

⻬ Validated Web pages display faster in a browser window.

⻬ Validated, clean code improves search engine accessibility and search

engine results rankings.

⻬ Validated pages are much easier to maintain and update.

⻬ A well-validated site can be your calling card for obtaining future

business.

To help you keep track of your progress, the validation process itself can be

performed methodically over the course of several days. This chapter walks

you through each of the steps. You begin by converting all the syntax on

every page to match the specified DTD in the code. Then, you perform

(X)HTML, CSS, and accessibility testing on every page. If you find any

errors, you spend time fixing them and then retest to ensure that you’ve

either fixed everything or that problematic code fails acceptably. After that,

you’re done. As a final optional step, you can display some kind of proof of

validation on your site to show the world that you cared enough to spend

the time doing the testing in the first place.

Performing Prelaunch Testing

Building a Web site is one of those activities that requires you to remember

a lot of little details. Besides designing the mock-up, optimizing all the

graphics, creating a template, building the individual pages, pasting in all

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