TROUBLESHOOTING STRATEGY
The following troubleshooting strategy identifies some common problems that web designers encounter during the management and maintenance of their websites. These basic tips and solutions offer a comprehensive approach for testing web pages, prior to publishing, in order to resolve many common problem areas that serve to prevent content from appearing on the World Wide Web, as originally intended by the author of a website.
Validate HTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheet)
The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), a standards body that regulates what “is” and is “not” in the HTML specifications, offers its “W3C HTML Validation Service”. HTML can be validated for conformity to web standards with both the W3C “Mark-Up Validator”. CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) style rules can be similarly validated with the “CSS Validator”.
There are two optional approaches to validate a web page, through either the “URL” of the page -or- by “uploading” from your computer’s hard disk. For a Web Page page that is already online enter the address, upload the HTML file, or copy-and-paste your HTML document in the online form. After you submit your information, the W3C HTML Validation Service will display a listing of the potential problems found in your HTML. After correcting the mistakes, you can resubmit your page to confirm that your document is free of HTML errors.
Test Hyperlinks
All hyperlinks within a website need to be tested to discover any broken links to repair with the W3C's “Link Checker”. The “URL” of a web page may be used to validate its internal hyperlinks.
Cross-Browser Compatibility
To insure that a website is cross -or- multiple browser compatible, its pages should be viewed within each of the major web browsers including Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and Mozilla Firefox, or even Opera, for text-only compatibility.
Download Speed
The download time for a web page is of vital importance to the success of a website. A web page should be tested to determine the download speed of its accompanying image Graphics, Flash components, streaming Media, and Sound files.
COMMON PROBLEMS
The following troubleshooting sites identify some common problems that users encounter with the management and maintenance of their websites.
- The “HTML Basic Tutor” offers a comprehensive troubleshooting strategy for testing web pages to resolve many common problem areas prior to publishing.
- The “PC-Man Website ” provides basic tips and solutions to resolve many issues that serve to prevent web page content from appearing on the World Wide Web, as originally intended by the author of a website.
Here is a brief summary of the guidelines and tips from each of these websites:
Missing DOCTYPE
The first line of your HTML document should be a <DOCTYPE> declaration; otherwise, HTML validators will not be able to do their job. For example, a typical HTML 4.01 document would use the following as its first line:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
Inaccessible Home Page or Main Page
If an “access denied” error or a list of files appears when attempting to access your web site, the “Home Page” may have an incorrect name. Every hosting company requires that the very first page of a website must be named “index.html”, or sometimes, “default.html”, “default.htm”, or “home.html”.
Background Graphic Image Does not Appear
The background image has not been uploaded into the right directory folder -or- with the other graphic images.
Missing Graphic Images
Similarly, all graphic images need to be uploaded to the right directory folder. In turn, the correct path reference must be made to the “sub-directory” (usually an “images” Folder) for each graphic image.
Slow Graphic Image Download
The graphic image file size must be reduced to an acceptable minimum within an Image Editor before being placed within a web page. This will serve to speed-up download time and will not distort the graphic image. Some webmasters use large graphic images but, improperly specify a smaller image size in the HTML code to decrease files size -- which will only slow down a web page’s download by a least a factor of three times or more!
Graphic Image Distortion
An incorrect image size was set within the HTML mark-up. To see the correct size of a graphic image, right-click on it in the “image” Folder and choose “Properties” from the context menu, then enter the actual “Width” and “Height”. If you want to change the size of the image, the best practice is to do so in a graphic editor instead of within a web page, to avoid distortion or a ‘pixilated’ look.
Excessive Scrolling is Required to View Content
Make any Table no more than 85% of a web page’s “Width” and use a “Center” alignment. This insures that regardless of how large or small monitors are, your visitors will always see your text centered with the need for “horizontal scrolling”. In addition, check for links that may be too long or graphic images that are too wide. Both will make a web page wider than the screen may allow for viewing with even large monitors.
Tables are Wider than Specified
Often, even if a relatively narrow “Width” is specified for a Table, for example only 500 pixels, a web browser will still stretch it to 700 pixels, or more. Usually, there are two reasons for this occurrence:
- A graphic image is wider than the Table, itself. Reduce its size and the Table will shrink as well.
- A “long” URL is used somewhere in the Table text. By shortening -or- removing the long URL the Table will shrink to its specified size.
This can happen for different reasons, but all of them usually are caused by a lack of “closing” tags in the HTML mark-up as follows:
- When a closing <TABLE> tag is missing, the entire content of a Table might be missing, too. All <TABLE>, <TR>, and <TD> tags must be closed.
- Comment tags were not closed and the web browser “comments out” all other following text.
- A “Quotation Mark” is not closed in <IMG SRC> or <A HREF> tags.
- <TEXTAREA> tags in a <FORM> are left unclosed.
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