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Web Style, Development And Testing

By Herman Catano


A lot of organizations are interested in building internet applications for their small business but are unaware of the numerous steps which are needed to develop a compelling web application. In this article I will attempt to put together the numerous pieces of the puzzle. Application development involves numerous distinct efforts that need to come together to develop a compelling end item. A compelling end item is the combination of style, development architecture, development implementation, automated regression and functional testing and performance and load testing.

Style: People usually confuse design with development. Moreover even within design, user interface design is usually confused with graphics design. Internet user interface design involves the design of the flow of the web site plus the layout of the distinct internet pages within the web-site. The internet user interface designer concentrates on the usability of the application. The user interface designer will ordinarily develop "wireframes" using tools like Adobe Photoshop to convey the style. These are normally initially developed as prototypes and usability testing is carried with user groups out to make sure that the web application will probably be intuitive and straightforward to make use of. Graphics design on the other hand relates to the aesthetics of the page. The graphics designer is responsible for the aesthetic layout of the pages plus the creation of the numerous graphical objects inside the pages which include images and flash objects. The graphics Designer will typically use a combination of tools for instance Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Captivate to produce the actual graphics objects. A designer will want to function closely with other groups to create positive the style method doesn't compromise the performance of the application by creating positive that the graphics objects are modest therefore ensuring that the different internet performance metrics are unaffected.

Development: This involves converting the design into an actual application. The development commonly involves an architectural phase where the underlying modules that make up the application are scoped out. If persistent data storage is needed, a database schema need to be created to accommodate the information storage needs. The selection of the operating system (e.g. Windows, Linux or Solaris) where the web application will run, the web server (e.g. Microsoft IIS, Apache or Tomcat) which will run the internet application and also the back end database (e.g. Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL or PostgreSQL) which stores the information will need to be produced. Several development frameworks are readily available to create web applications. One of the most prevalent ones are ASP and ASP.NET from Microsoft, Java Servlets and JSP from Sun, PHP and Perl which are open source. The option of the application framework is normally dictated by the strengths of the members of the development team. The architectural phase is followed by the implementation phase. This is generally the longest component of the project and in the course of this phase the actual code is written employing the design specifications and graphics objects developed by the style team. The programming will typically be completed using a combination of the application frameworks mentioned earlier together with HTML, JavaScript and CSS style sheets.

Top quality Assurance and Testing: A surprising number of persons are of the view that excellent assurance and testing is desirable but just isn't basically necessary. Unfortunately this view has its roots in total ignorance of the method which is required to create a superb end product. Regardless of how pretty or slick we make the application, if it doesn't function as expected, users will reject it. Good quality assurance and testing involve two various kinds of tasks. Functional and regression testing is utilized to verify that the developed application is performing what it can be supposed to do. This is achieved by test automation employing a functional testing tool. Load and Performance testing is used to guarantee that the application performs as intended when it truly is subjected to the typical load of a production environment. Load testing is practically speaking impossible to perform without using an automated load testing tool given that it involves the simulation of a significant number of concurrent virtual users. This effect can not seriously be achieved manually and requirements the assistance of an application that's developed to subject the application to a specified load and then measure its performance when it's subjected to that load. Top quality Assurance teams will have to have to track the bugs or defects in the application using bug tracking tools. Such tools will allow defects to be tracked by all members of the team.

The 3 groups mentioned above tend to be specialized for their skill set. As an example, individuals usually make the mistake of utilizing developers as excellent assurance testers. This is not a wise strategy simply because most developers who are fantastic at writing software are rather poor at finding bugs or defects in their own software.

Writing excellent and compelling internet applications calls for an understanding of all phases of the process, design, development and excellent assurance. Skipping phases or taking shortcuts will result in low excellent software which will typically price much more inside the long run.




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