Webpage Test tool updates
Sunday, March 4th, 2007
The Webpage Test tool has been updated with a new look and a few new features.
The biggest improvement is the ability to temporarily save test pages, similar to services like pastebin. The saved pages will remain on the server for at least two days before being deleted to save space. The saved page URL is also a short identifier rather than the entire source like the (now removed) “Link” feature used.
You may also specify a base URL outside the HTML. This is useful if you’re trying to offer someone corrected webpage source with URLs relative to the original URL but don’t want to confuse the person by including a base element in the HTML.
Basic HTML templates for HTML 4.01 Strict, XHTML 1.0, and XHTML 1.1 are available via links at the top of the page. Note that the XHTML templates come with the correct content-type (application/xhtml+xml) so browsers handle it like real XHTML. Because Internet Explorer doesn’t support true XHTML, IE will give you the usual download dialog instead of the webpage.
Finally, the system has been updated with a snazzier look. The new look is supported by Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, and other modern browsers. Internet Explorer currently falls back to a simpler look.
I have recently resumed work on a PHP-based SGML parser and syntax highlighter I’ve been developing, which I will try to eventually incorporate into this system. It aims to support much more of the SGML standard than the common alternatives and also provides indication of some common errors like invalidly placed elements and unrecognized character entities, elements, and attributes. It will not, however, attempt to be a complete validator.