Tools (15 links)
More General Topic(s): Methods (16)
Software your can run to help you make your site more usable.
Do not rely on the tools, of course: they should supplement your already-sound user-centered design methodology.
Software for Information Architects
http://argus-acia.com/strange_connections/strange011.html
Content management, portals, search engines, and more.
Topic:
(27)
Destination: ACIA (15)
Author:
Morville, Peter (4)
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February 23, 2001
Usability Tools: A Useful Start
http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2000/08/stratrevu/
Review of 4 tools to help with usability.
WebTechniques article about:
- WebSAT
- Lift
- WebCriteria
- NetRaker
Of course, you would never imagine using these tools instead of other user-centered design methodology, but they can help.
Destination: Web Techniques (20)
Author:
Chak, Andrew (1)
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August 17, 2000
Web-Based User Interface Evaluation with Questionnaires
http://www.acm.org/~perlman/question.html
CGI to conduct QUIS, PUEU, CSUQ, and PUTQ surveys.
Topic:
Methods (16)
Author:
Perlman, Gary (7)
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January 1, 2000
Screen Size Tester
http://www.anybrowser.com/ScreenSizeTest.html
January 1, 2000
Web Test Dummy
http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/1999/07/carter/
Topic:
Inspection Methods (6)
Destination: Web Techniques (20)
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July 6, 1999
W3C HTML Validator
http://validator.w3.org/
Check HTML with the standard.
World Wide Web Consortium's checker is the definitive HTML validator. It is recommended to verify with HTML 4.0 now. Has links into the standards documents to make it easy to track down the reasons behind the errors.
A graphic is provided to advertise on pages that pass the test.
Topic:
Technology (18)
Destination: World Wide Web Consortium (8)
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January 7, 1999
Web Page Purifer
http://www.delorie.com/web/purify.html
Removes non-standard HTML features from a page and shows what the result looks like.
Let's you choose from HTML 2.0, 3.2 and WebTV 1.1 support, for example, to give you some idea of what a page might look like on those "older" systems. This is a good way to see if some of your "fancy" HTML features do any harm on systems that do not support the features.
Topic:
Technology (18)
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January 7, 1999
Lynx Viewer
http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html
See how pages rendered with text-browser Lynx.
Lynx represents a key "lowest common denominator" because it can only handle the text aspects of a web page. If your pages are usable with Lynx, then they are probably also usable with the plethora of other non-typical user agents out there (palm tops, pagers, etc).
Topic:
Browsers (15)
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January 7, 1999
Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer
http://www.delorie.com/web/wpbcv.html
See pages with tags removed.
Enter a URL and watch as a script removes certain tags. Can be used to see what a page looks like on (older) browsers that do not implement certain features.
For example, you can have all of the table tags removed to see how a non-table browser might present your page. Other tags you can target include: IMG, FRAME, FONT, CENTER.
Topic:
Browsers (15)
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January 7, 1999
WebMetrics Tool Suite
http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/
Rapid, remote, and automated tools to help in producing usable web sites.
Tools from NIST:
- The Web Static Analyzer Tool (WebSAT): checks HTML against numerous usability guidelines.
- The Web Category Analysis Tool (WebCAT): construct and conduct a simple category analysis.
- The Web Visual Instrumenter Program (WebVIP): instrument a web site for local or remote testing
June 21, 1998
WebCAT
http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/WebTools/WebCAT/overview.html
Determine how well the categories and items are understood by users.
Category Analysis Tool is a variation upon traditional card sorting techniques.
Steps:
- Create the matching exercise
- Usability engineer creates the baseline
- User performs matching exercise
- Interpret results
Part of WebMetrics Tool Suite.
Topic:
(27)
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June 20, 1998
Bobby
http://bobby.watchfire.com/bobby/html/en/index.jsp
Check pages to see how accessible they are to people with disabilities.
Finds missing ALT tags and many other cases that limit access by some users. Also finds compatibility problems with different browsers. Can download the source code and run on your own machine.
Topic:
Accessibility (19)
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August 28, 1997
ANY Browser Viewer
http://www.anybrowser.com/siteviewer.html
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The Accessible Web Author's Toolkit
http://aware.hwg.org/tools/
Destination: AWARE (3)
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Greeker
http://aware.hwg.org/greeker/
Destination: AWARE (3)
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