Foreign Perspectives

Testing websites can be quite difficult once you go beyond the simple online brochure type of website.

For one thing, unlike most “normal” computer applications, you have untold millions of untrained people who can access your site and therefore you need to make sure that you try equally stupid things along the way of your testing as they are sure to do in “real life”. Clearly internet connections go down for instance and you need to allow for that, but what about the speed of their connections? One or two sites that I’ve tried out lately have consistently timed out on me no matter what I’ve done because my connection just isn’t anything like the speed that the writers of the site assumed that it would be.

Once you get into databases it’s a whole different ballgame too. For one thing, you always need to be able to let a number of people update your database simultaneously which in itself requires a different style of programming than that which is sometimes taught in the schools. What’ll work on a closed corporate network isn’t necessarily acceptable on an open Internet one.

Even after your site is up for a while, you should make a point of trying it out now and again. Actually looking it as your customers will see it. Remember they don’t necessarily have the 25″ widescreen monitor that you have and, even today, are more than likely using resolutions of 1000×800 or less. Watch the fonts you use too as many that you get with your computer aren’t available via the Internet; newer computers don’t always support the fonts on the older ones either.