First Look: WebQA

Wayne N. Kawamoto
Managing Editor, www.smallbusinesscomputing.com

Watchfire Corporation, a provider of Website Management software and services, announced the availability of Watchfire WebQA. WebQA is a website quality testing tool designed for small to medium sized websites or departmental sites that require a content testing solution for an individual developer or quality assurance engineer. Building on the demand and popularity of Watchfire’s original developer tool Linkbot, this new product assists with quality assurance by scanning and analyzing web content and producing over 35 reports that help developers and QA resources pinpoint and fix issues including content and web application defects, and searchability, usability, and accessibility problems.

WebQA is made up of three components: Content, Interaction, and Tag. Content analyzes and reports on web content issues such as broken links, slow loading pages, spelling, metadata, and missing ALT text. Interaction records and plays back scripts that duplicate the actions a user makes on a site to see if the transactions and interactions on the site, (such as checkouts and login forms), are working as designed. Tag is used to automatically add, edit, and manage metatags contained in documents on a website.

WebQA scans and checks a site for more than 60 potential problems and reports on issues like broken links, spelling mistakes, slow pages, browser compatibility, missing keywords, missing descriptions and ALT text, orphaned files and page quality and inventory. WebQA is designed to scan and check the file formats that include HTML, JavaScript, Flash, & dynamically generated content (ASP, JSP, CFM, etc.)

Pricing and availability

WebQA is available immediately from Watchfire’s direct sales force at
1-800-282-5951 or download from www.watchfire.com for US$1495.00. Customers may download WebQA for a 15-day evaluation period. For more technical information, please visit http://www.watchfire.com/products/webqa.asp.