Summary

This chapter can be regarded as a self-preservation manual. Sites are never perfect, and things go wrong. The ability to methodically and meticulously locate and fix problems is a valuable skill to develop. As we said right at the start, "Testing is a time-consuming process," and you really should consider devoting at least 10% of the project's time budget to this process.

We started with a review of the code debugging process and stressed that this is a task best left to the coders. We then reviewed the debugging features of ColdFusion MX, Dreamweaver MX 2004, Director MX, and Flash MX 2004. We also dealt with the importance of accessibility to web sites and how Dreamweaver MX 2004 can help the process of making a site accessible. We also touched on alpha and beta testing and their importance in the production process.

We started the debugging section with ColdFusion MX's Administration panel and its debugging settings. We reviewed many of the settings, the way to set up IP addresses for ColdFusion debugging, the importance of ColdFusion MX logs and the way to create them, and finished with an overview of how to configure ColdFusion MX to send an email in the event of a problem.

Dreamweaver MX 2004 was next , and we showed you how to use the Clean Up HTML/XHTML command to optimize your code and how to Balance Braces used in JavaScripts in Dreamweaver's Code View.

We then looked at the Director MX Debugger and reviewed many of this tool's valuable features. We also showed you how to use the Script window to fix coding errors.

Naturally, Flash MX 2004 figures into the coding equation. We explained how to use the trace function and the Debug panel to isolate errors or code problems. From there, we moved into a brief overview of functionality and suggested that if you need a humbling experience, watch somebody try to use your site.

We then examined the issue of accessibility in today's development environment and pointed out that governments worldwide are making accessibility a jurisdictional requirement. We reviewed the extensive accessibility features of Dreamweaver MX 2004 and also offered a short list of things you can do today to accommodate accessibility.

We finished the chapter with a brief discussion of the testing team and their responsibilities. The team should either be a company retained for this purpose or a group of individuals not involved in the creation of the site. We also discussed browser testing and link checking in Dreamweaver MX 2004 and announced the death of 3.0 browser support in Dreamweaver MX 2004.