testing

Testing The WP For iOS Visual Editor

I have the WordPress for iOS app open and I’m checking out how the visual editor works. Im not sure what happened to the previous editor, but this is a much better writing experience than the previous version.

There’s even a toggle to switch between visual and HTML modes like the desktop version of WordPress.

salad for lunch

Salad for lunch

This was a yummy salad. Adding an image is a smooth process, but when it’s inserted, it takes up the entire editing window. It took a few tries but I was able to get underneath the image, past the caption point.

This is me testing the block quote feature.

Block quotes are infuriating because I can’t seem to block quote specific text and continue normal writing. It’s as if I’m stuck in this block quote and the only way out is to unblock quote all of the text.

It looks like adding block quotes has to be done after the post is written. At the very least, users will need to learn this quirk to block quote effectively.

  1. Testing numbered lists
  2. Two
  3. Three

That worked well, now bulleted lists.

  • One
  • Two
  • Three

That worked well. Now to add a link to my site, jeffc.me. Adding a link was easy. Outside of the block quote madness, this is pretty nice.

The Ultimate URL Tester

Test Everything Logo

This perhaps might be the ultimate online URL tester I’ve seen yet. The online project which was created by Jonas John and is aptly named Test Everything gives end users a myriad of tools they can use to test various aspects of their URL. Everything from CSS and HTML validators to, Network tools to Web Proxies, just about everything seems to be covered in this group of tests.

To start things off, the website presents a text field where you can either type in your domain name, or an IP address.

Time To Test

Before you can initiate a test, you first have to select what it is you will be testing from the test browser below the text field. For starters, I’ve decided to use the CSS and HTML validators and selected the HTML/XHTML validator through validome.org.

Time To Validate

As you can see from the screenshot above, there are actually two pages worth of validators for this category. After selecting the appropriate validator, click on the Test website button. This will send the URL to test to the appropiate validator and will redirect your browser to the results page. I don’t want to publish my results here as they are pretty embarassing.

I noticed a strange anomaly while using FireFox 2.0.14 and this website. After I would choose the validator and click on the Test Website button, nothing would happen. However, in IE7 the site performed as expected. In fact, none of the buttons work in FireFox which is a disappointment as it’s usually the other way around. While writing this review, FireFox and this website are playing nicely with each other. I have no idea what is going on between the two, but it appears to be a hit and miss problem.

The project is based on the Yahoo! UI Library otherwise known as YUI as well as the Highslide JS and the silk icon pack by Mark James. If you notice a test that is missing but you would like to see added, Jonas has provided a suggest page that you can use to request that the service be added. If that weren’t enough, there is a Test Everything bookmarklet available which honestly seems to me to be pretty useless as the domain that is automatically inserted into the test everything box is Jonas’s domain. I would of rather seen my domain inserted into the box automatically or perhaps, a bookmarlet which gives me access to all of the testers from within my bookmark bar.

When everything is said and done, this is a pretty good idea of a website to harness the power of all of the various validation/testing services on the net into one central location. I think the testing interface could use a little bit of work, along with the bookmarklet but I believe I can see this site becomes an excellent resource for webmasters of all types. Perhaps someone can take the ideas of Jonas website and put them into a FireFox extension, unless that already exists which I would kindly appreciate a link to.