Tip 33 - Testing

I thought I woudl take some time to mention one area most website designers and developers struggle with and that is testing. Simply put just making sure your website works and looks the same on all browsers.

It is the norm for anyone who designs websites on a regular basis to have an array of browsers on their machine in order to check that their website works on different browsers, but you may be asking what about me I only have a single website and its too much to have all browsers on my machine.

The Solution

The solution lies in online testing, and although there are a lot of websites that offer this service both free and paid, the best one I have come accross is by the lovely people at Adobe and its called the Adobe Browser Lab this lovely service let you test you website in not only different browsers but different operating systems also.

Dont Forget

Whilst it is always a good idea to test your website in different browsers, never forget that not everyone is using teh same size or resolution of monitor, although the standard is still 1024 x 768 make sure you test on as many resolutions as possible, and remember a given resolution is not the same on a wide screen monitor as it may be on say a Mac laptop.

So in testing make sure you test both compatibility as well as viewability.

Are you making the most out of your website and social media. The answer will most definately be no. Ask for a FREE report now. Go to www.potissimus.co.uk for more info.

Tip 25 - Browser Size

With the every increasing monitor sizes available today, it has never been more important to make sure your website will look the same on all monitors.

It is still safe to say that the most commonly used screen size is 1024 wide by 768 high, although some people still use 800 wide by 600 high. Although they are a dying breed and with technology prices falling, laptops and desktop screen becoming ever larger you should try your site on a variety of monitor sizes.

One thing to keep in ming when designing your layout is a term known as "below the fold", put simply this means that at the time of loading anything a user can see on your website is "above the fold" and any content a user has to scroll to see is "below the fold". This is an expectable way to show content, especially when you have lots of text articles or similar.

HOWEVER

You must design your page so that it is not wider than the users screen, people do not want to scroll across to read content. So if you have to make your site not as wide and make it longer, but avoid side scrolling content.

You may be thinking "How do I test my content in a variety of size? I only have one monitor" well other than messing with your computer display settings, there are a number of ways to do this. The easiest is to use one of the many website tools out there to aid your design.

Here are a couple of tools I use to test website design

1. Web Confs - Web Page Screen Resolution Simulator
2 Google Labs - Browser Size Tool

So remember when testing to make sure everyone can see all your hard work.

Are you making the most out of your website. The answer will most definately be no. Ask for a FREE report now. Go to www.potissimus.co.uk for more info.