More KompoZer Tools

No sooner had I posted a list of tools I find helpful when I discovered two more. All of these tools are so useful that I thought you should know about. The Wave toolbar and Webscale are also useful to have around.

The Issue is Accessibility

To my way of thinking the qualities of a web page must include valid code and accessible content. KompoZer will generally produce valid code but the HTML and CSS needs to be checked. Web Developer has that built in plus a link to the W3C validator. Web developer also has a quick link to Cynthia Says™ to check accessibility. Cynthia Says™ is on my recommended list but I find Wave is easier to use.

The accessibility issue is discussed in an earlier post as well as on another Wysi site. I like Wave because you can navigate through a site while evaluating each page. I just recently downloaded the toolbar.

The Wave toolbar is an add-on to Firefox. When the toolbar is active all you need to do click on "Errors Features and Alerts" to evaluate the page in the active tab. Typically I will finish a page in KompoZer and hit the "Browse" icon to load the page in Firefox. With one click will quickly determine if the page is accessible. I generally don't like toolbars but the Wave and Web Developer toolbars are too handy to pass up when you are developing a site.

Weigh in on Webscale

I'm not sure why AnalogX named these tools Webscale but they are very useful in evaluating the design of a web page. There are two tools, a timer and a viewer that can be used on line or bookmarked and run from there.

How long your page take to load is very significant to the usefulness of your information. You have about 3 seconds before the visitor checks out in favor of another option. As a dial-up user I hated long loading times and often left before the first page was up. We should design for at least a 56K modem and meet the 3 second limit. (Unfortunately the Wiki page on accessibility takes 39 seconds @ 56K. Almost none of the load time is in my control.)

Site Timer gives you an overview of the page load, information on images, and a list of links on the page. The engine viewer takes a look at the page with the eyes of a search engine. That is important if you want your site to be discovered by the general public.

The engine viewer has tabs like Site Timer to give you an overview, a list and count of keywords, and a link list as the most useful views. The robots tab is useful if you are using robot files or meta tags and there is a structured view of the HTML. I use other tools for viewing HTML.

Full Toolbox

This is the third post on tools. The first, KompoZer and Other Tools, discussed my hit counter and a photo tool I use every day. The second, KompoZer Tools, listed tools useful for looking under the hood. I guess you could say I'm either ignorant or lazy for needing so many crutches. The reality is I'm both ignorant and lazy!

KompoZer is still my favorite web authoring tool. It is free, easy to use, and generally results in compliant and accessible code. My hat is off to all of you who make these tools available to the community.


Wysi

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