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RE: AccMonitor

for

From: Robert B. Yonaitis
Date: Aug 26, 2003 8:39PM

Good Questions:

> Maybe you could clarify this question a bit. Did you mean:
> are there versions that do not run on Windows platforms?
> Linux? UNIX? SCO UNIX (which includes everything everyone has
> ever written for UNIX)? Maybe Mr. Yonatis (the CEO of
> HISoftware by the way) could clear up some points.

(Current Version) Server must be installed on Windows 2000 or above server

AccMonitor Can Test Pages Residing or Any Server UNIX, LINUX, MAC, Etc....
mapped or via HTTP, HTTPS. FTP, etc... (HTTP, HTTPS makes more sense
generally, for reasons mentioned later in this mail. *** Now this is
important! Test your UNIX Server based Tester and see if it can handle unix
based files properly, you may be surprised with the poor results!,
HiSoftware has 0 issues with files based on unix servers.

>
> Will AccMonitor parse files like Cold Fusion code, ASP code,
> PHP code etc., or just the final page after it is processed
> and served by the server?

Depending on specific code all of the above. We have Special Parsers built
to handle special coding found in ASP ETC, and the ability for the user to
customize much of the same if they wish to.

However

I agree with: Generally we want to check the accessibility of the final
page that the user experiences. I'm not sure whether any
product is adept at navigating parts of pages or non-HTML tag
names to check the accessibility at that level.


> Since many developers will create multiple versions of pages
> for different browsers that can be assembled using detection
> schemes and includes using PHP, ASP, JSP etc., I think we
> also need to know if AccMonitor can successfully spoof
> various user agents, so it can test the served version of a
> page for a particular user agent, should a site be programmed
> that way.

And yes this can be set and a very good point. This is fully tested and has
been around since version 1.0 of our software.

> It is logically possible for web pages composed of includes,
> and other generated HTML code to have accessibility problems
> even if the disassembled parts might check out OK, so
> checking raw code except for the final full page could lead
> to not catching errors. So it is not perfectly clear whether
> testing anything but the page a user is going to experience
> is practical. It might be most practical when developing
> general templates for a site, but still the final page is
> what has to be compliant. To check PHP, ASP, JSP, Cold
> Fusion, and languages used in CGI would mean that the
> software has to process code for each of those languages,
> which might not be practical to develop. Accessibility is at
> the users' end, not the server side.

Correct, All Very nicely handled by our servers and clients and an important
feature.


>
> Manual checking of pages is usually almost always necessary,
> so someone who knows what they are doing has to be part of
> use the package. The various applications developed by
> HISoftware do indicate what needs to be checked manually.
> They also can give a good overview of what percentage a
> particular problem on large site is, so one can gauge what
> kind of resources will be needed to fix the site.
>

We can (Our Software) give you metrics of what needs to be tested manually,
as well as integrating a web based or client interview wizard that lets you
validate that the manual checks have been completed and provide complete
reports based on this... Our desktop Software has comprehensive (Built-In)
Preview modes to assist with the manual checks. We are unique in the
interview process and total accountability in reporting, in servers and
clients.

> I have been told that HISoftware is very responsive to user
> input, something a lot of software companies seem to have
> forgotten about.

We try. And we will continue to improve because of tremendous and positive
user feedback as well as logical demands for improvement (Critical
Feedback). A Software company must meet the needs of their users whom they
are providing solutions for. IMHO

Anyone should feel free to request demo software and take it for a test
drive. There is no need for a slew of specialist or consultants to install
our trial software.

Remember our software can test it all, including SVG, XML, You name it...

Best Regards,

Rob Yonaitis




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