QA Focus Survey Update Of Project Web Sites

On 28 ^th May 2003 an update was carried out on the Compliance Surveys previously carried out for the All Programmes meeting held at the University of Nottingham in 2002.

About The Surveys

Please note the following:

The surveys cover the JISC 5/99 project Web sites.

The surveys have been carried out using a number of automated tools.

It is recognised that:

The project Web sites have different purposes.
Projects have a range of deliverables.
Projects are at different stages, and some have finished.
The survey tools have limitations.
More comprehensive surveys will require manual analyses.

Despite these limitations, the surveys aim to provide an update of the approaches taken by projects and of compliance with best practices.

Data Format Standards

1 - HTML Compliance Of Project Web Site Home Page

Summary: The W3C's HTML validation service was used to report on the compliance with HTML standards of project home pages. The Web Design Group HTML compliance checking tool was used as a recursive validator.

Report: Report - Report Summary

2 - CSS Compliance For Project Web Sites

Summary: The W3C's CSS validation service was used to report on the compliance with CSS standards of project home pages.

Report: Report - Report Summary

Accompanying Documentation

A number of documents have been produced to provide advice on best practices related to the areas covered in the surveys.

Background To The Surveys

QA Focus is developing a toolkit which will allow projects themselves to validate their own procedures for monitoring compliance with standards and best practices.

The first step in the development of the toolkit is the use of automated Web-based tools which are freely available for use by all. The tools will be used with clusters of JISC 5/99 projects in order to gain experience in the use of such tools.

We hope that the comparisons which can be made across projects will help in ensuring that examples of best practices can be identified allowing the approaches used to be adopted by other projects.