Stoyan Stefanov recently did a post on performance testing tools. In that post, he mentioned Yahoo! YSlow. From the YSlow website:

"YSlow analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance based on a set of rules for high performance web pages. YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the Firebug web development tool. YSlow grades web page based on one of three predefined ruleset or a user-defined ruleset. It offers suggestions for improving the page's performance, summarizes the page's components, displays statistics about the page, and provides tools for performance analysis, including Smush.it™ and JSLint."

Mary Flaherty wrote an article recently titled Are Your Landing Pages Driving Clients Away? In the article, she provides some great tips, that I think also make great test ideas. Here's a quick summary:

• Does the landing page have a clear call to action? In her words, "Where's the doorbell?" Test ideas around this might include asking users if they know what they're suppose to do next once they hit the landing page. Or watching where they go and seeing if there's convergence or not.


• Does the landing page present all the options in a manageable way? That is, can you quickly see what the options are, and find what you might need? In her words, "Which door is which?" Test ideas around this might include asking users to find specific information and seeing how long it takes for them to find it from landing - again looking for convergence. I might also ask users to write down what they think the site contains without navigating past the landing, and time how long it takes them to do it.


• If you collect visitor information, only ask for what's absolutely necessary.  Test ideas include looking at the business process being served by collecting the information and evaluating how it would change if something wasn't collected. Is that ok? Less might be more at this early stage...


• How is information laid out and what's the quality of the copy editing. She identifies this as the risk of "TMI." Test ideas include making sure the site has copy guidelines (and they are followed), ensuring the writing is appropriate for the audience (jargon, concepts, structure, etc...), and making sure the layout is visually appealing. Mary also talks about dumping unneeded animations, choosing relevant images, and keeping information up to date and relavent. All of these are possible tests and/or heuristics for possible problems with the site.

Check out the full article for more ideas.

If you're a regular JMeter user, you might be interested in taking a look at the Statistical Aggregate Report listener. The Statistical Aggregate Report listener is a JMeter plugin that kinda combines the Graph Results listener and the Aggregate Report listener into one handy little chart.

Over the weekend I had a need to hack into a site to make some changes and do some testing. (It was all on the up and up, the client was aware.) At one point, I ran into a spot where I needed to work with the MD5 secure hash algorithm. I found the informaiton, resources, and the tool provided by JavaScript MD5 to be very helpful in figuring out what I needed to do.

In a recent blog post, Antony Marcano posted his mnemonic for managing risk: MARTA

Mitigate
Avoid
Reduce
Transfer
Accept

Read the full post for details behind each point.