If you really want to give your pages a _test_ you shouldn't use default settings on the most popular browser on the most popular computer. You should make _extreme_ settings and see if the page survives the abuse. Here are some tests you can put your pages through: 1. Huge Font, Tiny Window Set the font size of your browser to HUGE and shrink the window to tiny. Then gradually make the window bigger until you feel that the page "survives" (i.e. can be viewed without horisontal scrolling. Ok, your logo may push out a little to the right but all your links and text should be visible and understandable and make sense to somebody who hasn't seen the page before...). The width is the most critical measure. Measure width and height with a "pixel ruler": http://www.ludd.luth.se/users/vk/pics/design/misc/rulers/RULERS.HTML (yes, I made those). If you can get your page to survive at about 550x400 with huge text then you either have a good design or nothing to say... 2. Huge Window, Tiny Font And then, one day, when you visit your cousin who has a HUGE monitor you can do the opposite - view the page with tiny text and in a browser that covers as much as possible of the screen. Does your page crawl up in one corner and look like it's saying "please don't hit me!"? Does it look "empty"? Then maybe it's time to rethink some of your design choices. A good page should survive both test 1 and test 2. 3. The Colourblind Computer At my school I have had to use black-and-white monitors a lot. It can be really interesting to see one's own homepage turn into a black nothing on such a screen. There are two types of black-and-white screens, one where you get black, white and a whole bunch of grey shades and one where you get black and white, and NO grey shades. The black and white only type makes a particularly interesting test. It tells you if you use good contrast between background and text on your pages and if there is too much contrast in your background image. What you should see on such a monitor is either black text on a white background or white text on a black background (please note that I mean this when using the latest version of Netscape with image loading ON! The only "handicap" here should be the "colourblindness"). 4. NS vs IE Then have a go at getting the differences between Netscape and IE disappear as much as possible. But DON'T BURY YOURSELF IN THIS WORK! There will be some differences that you can't get rid of! (but think, if you always got _exactly_ the same look in both, what would be the point in having two different browsers?) 5. The Lynx Test Getting the pages to work for both Netscape and IE is nice but the real _test_ is lynx. To pass the lynx test it doesn't have to look fantastically good, but it does have to _make_sense_! Remember that lynx can understand frames, imagemaps and - IMAGES! Assuming that "my picture collection isn't interesting to you because you use lynx" is _wrong_! Whoever told you _that_ didn't know what he was talking about! Lynx is NOT "outdated", it is just a bit _different_. 6. Old Browsers Then finally it can also be a good idea to try to get to look at your pages in some old and/or unusual browsers. I have an old xmosaic that is a really nice BS filter, it removes all colours, animations, java applets, etc. Don't "optimise" your pages for these old dinosaurs, but be aware of how they work, and consider the fact that there probably are some people "out there" who are still using them. 7. Other Types of Computers!!! Not everybody has a Mac! Not everybody has a PC! Not everybody is a unix freak! All these types of computers/people exist, and a whole bunch of others too. Try to get a chance to look at your pages on different types of computers! This can be very revealing! 8. Let Granny Surf Your Pages And watch her in action... See where she gets stuck. See what design decisions you might have to reconcider. Was it really such a good idea to have frames? Should I have chosen other colours than pink text on a red background? Is that background song really necessary? etc etc (of course it doesn't have to be Granny, you could use just about anybody who isn't already familiar with your pages. Preferably somebody who doesn't know very much about computers) 9. The Slow Computer Try to simulate a slow computer (or borrow your sister's old '286 with equally old modem) and see what your page is like to somebody on the other side of the world. I saw that somebody suggested simulating a slow connection by copying the whole homepage to a floppy and surfing from that. This sounds like a simple and efficient idea. 10. The Validator There are all sorts of nice little sites (whose URLs appear here in alt.html every now and then) that will test your page for this and for that. Try them! They're all very theoretical but you might learn something... At first you may feel completely overwhelmed and think that you will just throw the whole homepage away and never look at it again, when you see all the different interpretations that different browsers make of your page. Ignore those feelings! Keep fighting! With a bit of work you should be able to figure out how to make the page come through most of these tests looking "ok". Learn to live with the fact that you can't get your pages to look exactly the same everywhere! (and all this testing can also be quite fun! :) A tip: Simple design, simple tags, simple layout, etc often make better pages... (in NS and IE too!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Later added addition: 11. The "Coolness" Test Frames, gif animations, java applets, scrolling javascript, blinking text, background sounds etc can turn a Good Web Page into a Bad Web Page! These things can scare off many visitors (some of which have names like "Alta Vista", "Infoseek", "Webcrawler", "Yahoo", ... I have heard that these particular guys can be quite picky and tend to spit out fancy and glittering but content-free pages)! My tip is to have the _homepage_ (or "index page" or whatever you want to call it, the page you get to by "shortening the URL a bit") completely free of such things. Then you can place these things in subpages that a visitor can choose if he/she/it wants to see such things. Frames should be avoided at all costs (but I agree, there are a couple of situations where they actually _improve_ a page, but save them for those few special situations)! Frames are not suitable toys for beginners! Let your homepage making skills become at least a year old before you even concider playing with frames! Don't use more than one animation on one page! Animations slow each other down and add a lot of unnecessaary load to the computer. It is also Bad Psychology to have things that move around or blink on a page where you want people to read the text (it's just too _distracting_). A page filled with frames, animations, java/javascript, your favourite music playing in the background etc is NOT "cool", just _annoying_! I know how tempting it can be to fill your home on the web with all kinds of technical stuff - just because you _can_ (I did that too when I started out with my first homepage) but _please_, keep it in a "Special Effects Gallery" and keep the _homepage_ "clean"!