Web standards checklist: A fairly extensive guide to standards in a question/checklist format. "The term web standards can mean different things to different people. For some, it is 'table-free sites', for others it is 'using valid code'. However, web standards are much broader than that. A site built to web standards should adhere to standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT, DOM, MathML, SVG etc) and pursue best practices (valid code, accessible code, semantically correct code, user-friendly URLs etc). In other words, a site built to web standards should ideally be lean, clean, CSS-based, accessible, usable and search engine friendly. This is not an uber-checklist. It is simply a guide that can be used..." 08/08/07

Developing with Web Standards: "This document explains how and why using web standards will let you build websites in a way that saves time and money for the developer and provides a better experience for the visitor. Also discussed are other methods, guidelines and best practices that will help produce high-quality websites that are accessible to as many as possible." 08/08/07

A Roadmap to Standards: "This is a comprehensive, informal, and somewhat long-winded roadmap for anyone who has heard about web standards, thinks they might want web standards, but doesn’t know where to start." 08/08/07

FREE Web Page Analyzer & Speed Test: "Try our free web site speed test to improve website performance. Enter a URL to calculate page size, composition, and download time. The script calculates the size of individual elements and sums up each type of web page component. Based on these page characteristics the script then offers advice on how to improve page load time. The script incorporates best practices from HCI research into its recommendations." 02/01/06

***Site Analysis: Site mechanic with excellent reports

***Developer Tools galore: Including instant-view HTML coder, HTML Inspector/Validator, Flash Embedder, much much more! Many references.

W3C Content Accessibility Guidelines

ZDNet ~ Making Your Web Site Accessible: FULL of good advice, tips, tricks for accessibility. If you don't know what accessibility means, you have to go here!

WebPages That Suck: Part of that site, a page called Web Design Information and Resources Links, has a good selection of links for "easy-to-read and understand information about how to make your Web sites successful". (And the Sucky Pages tour is very educational too.)

Webpage Purifier: Use this page to check:

what your page will look like on WebTV

what your page will look like as text-only (tick the "Check for text-only purity" box) -- this is how the blind will be experiencing your page because they use text readers to surf with. So please use "alt" tags on all your images!

The use of ALT tags: The ALT text is meant to provide alternative or substitute text for an image, primarily for use when the image is not being displayed. Check out this page of do's and don'ts. Or go here to view a table summary if you're short of time.

Lynx Viewer: Lynx is a text-mode web browser. See how your page will be viewed by these fast surfers! (You need all your images to have alt tags.)

Search Engine Simulator: This service allows web authors to see what their pages will look like (sort of) to a search engine.

Search Engine Hints for Tables: In the HTML table, you must include the text for a left sidebar before the main body text. This isn't what you want the search engines to see; you want the main body to be found first. This page shows you the trick to make that happen.

Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer: This page gives you a list of webpage features. You can check boxes for features you want your web browser to see and then each unchecked box causes those tags to be removed from your pages. I guess you'd only use this service if you wanted to get back to basics?