Images | Screen settings | Other browsers | Other people | Validation | Bobby
If you are using a graphical web browser, such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera or Netscape you can change the settings so that images don't get shown. Is your site still usable? Or have parts of it now become a bit of a mystery? This will give you an idea of what some visitors will get from your site.
You may have a large, high-resolution monitor. Some people still have 640 x 480 screens, and many have 800 x 600 screens even when their monitors are capable of a higher resolution. Change your screen settings to see how your web site looks. Visitors can set the default font size in their browser to a size that suits them - so change yours to see how it affects the look of your site.
Many different browsers are available free of charge. The exceptions are screen readers and text-to-speech browsers (although you can often get time-limited demo versions which would enable you to check your site). Some browsers may not be available for your operating system or platform, however.
You can down load the latest version of Internet Explorer from the Microsoft web site, and Netscape 7.1 is available from Netscape. Growing in popularity are Mozilla, Opera and (my favourite) Firefox. Mac users seem to have fallen in love with Safari, and there are also Linux-specific browsers like Konqueror and Galeon.
Earlier versions of many browsers can be found at Evolt. Watch out, though, as Internet Explorer only allows one version to be installed. You can however install several different versions of Netscape, as well as a host of other browsers.
Opera in particular is a useful browser for testing purposes, as it is very easy to turn various functions on and off, such as frames, images and javascript.
A free talking browser, Simply Web 2000, is available from Simply Internet. It depends on having Internet Explorer installed to function. Alternatively, you can download a 30-day trial of IBM Home Page Reader.
A version of Lynx for PCs, a text-only browser, is available from Fdisk.com.
If you know people who have a different make or a different kind of computer to you, ask them to have a look at your web site.
You can submit the address of your web site to the World Wide Web Consortium HTML Validation Service. This will show up any errors in the page's code. A valid page should display without problems in any browser. Validation errors may indicate that problems could arise with some browsers, or may arise in future, as yet unreleased, browsers.
You can test for problems with accessibility by people with disabilities by submitting your web site address to the testing software at Bobby. Bobby tests automatically for some potential problem features, and also lists others which have to be checked manually. It measures sites against the standards laid down in the Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines. Unfortunately, you can no longer download a free copy of the Bobby software to run on your own computer. The online service is still free, though.
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