Hi All.
What sort of testing do you guys go through before you launch a site. I know about testing on different browsers different speed machines and making all the links work, but every time I look at the sites im building I seem to notice something wrong.

Maybe a font or size of writing is different between pages. Maybe some of the pictures have not been resized.

I have just noticed now as well the way the hosting company has set the sub domains up they only read the website address in the browser window no matter what link is clicked. I wanted them set up so that when a link is clicked the full web page address can be seen. I need this so that pages can be emailed and also put into peoples browsers.

At the moment I am moving forward with the design but keep taking steps back that are un expected.

Thanks

James B

http://www.browsershots.org/
You have to wait, but it's worth it.

What sort of testing do you guys go through before you launch a site. I know about testing on different browsers different speed machines and making all the links work, but every time I look at the sites im building I seem to notice something wrong.

I personally use the site mentioned by MJM_RDS above, but still manually test it on multiple browsers - Opera, Netscape, FireFox, IE7 (IE6 at work) on XP, but have also built up a spare box running Linux for Konqueror, Gnome. Unfortunately at the end of the day, the only way to really test parts of your site is to view it manually. Most HTML editors these days can check site links to make sure they are all correct, and you can test for valid HTML markup etc on the web or some tools do it for you (you can get a FireFox add-on for this too!).

One useful tool is the 'Web Developer' add-on for FireFox, this I use regularly to diagnose and find potential problem areas, especially with CSS.

Maybe a font or size of writing is different between pages....

The simplest way around this is too use external CSS files if you can, this way you can control the text on every page from one file. Check this site: http://cssplay.co.uk

I have just noticed now as well the way the hosting company has set the sub domains up they only read the website address in the browser window no matter what link is clicked. I wanted them set up so that when a link is clicked the full web page address can be seen.

Do you have any links to the main site? it sounds like that the pages maybe in frames or similar, a quick look at your site could confirm this..

Hope this is of some help...

Before you release a website you should do all the things you have already done. Beyond that if you use php then check to see how hard it would be or how smart a person would be to have to "variable hack" or use ?variable=something to go beyond what is public.

Also, if the site keeps appearing to have "something missing" or "doesn't" look right then change colors, redo an image untill it balances out the rest of the page.

I have just noticed now as well the way the hosting company has set the sub domains up they only read the website address in the browser window no matter what link is clicked. I wanted them set up so that when a link is clicked the full web page address can be seen. I need this so that pages can be emailed and also put into peoples browsers.

This would be because that host does not fully register there subdomains, this usually occurs when novice coders try dns functions or the host company is hosted by someone else and therefore have limitations. They use something called a DNS Zone File that "displays" content at a certain url like a frame but prints the Zone URL (Your subdomain) No matter what there is a source url and that subdomain shouldn't be advertised or spread around. Generally in cases like this it is safe to assume it is something like "hosturl.com/myusername" or something. Contact there support team for more details.