does anyone use tools to check websites? for example i would put in a url and it would check for load speeds, w3c compliance, broken links, browser version compatibility and OS compatability etc etc

if so what do you use and why is it good?

http://validator.w3.org/ it's good because the w3c made it?

Yahoo have a tool called YSlow which will look at performance. Not sure about broken links but there's a firefox extension that'll look at a page and highlight them; I don't seem to have it installed any more but should be easy to find. Not sure about the other things you asked, I doubt there's anything that'd do that.

goddamn you spamming f***, f*** off

Result: 477 Errors, 214 warning(s)
Address: http://qgl.ausforums.com

There are many ways to judge a website's quality, most of these ways cannot be reproduced via a computer algorithm. The w3c validator is an example of an exception to this - but even so, there is no law or anything that says your website must be w3c compliant, just as nothing forces Internet Explorer to be w3c compliant. So whether you make your site w3c compliant is totally your choice. W3c compliance means you won't be able to use a few techniques/tags/attributes that are fully supported by major browsers, or by a particular browser. Use your brain, I guess, and don't bend over backwards to satisfy some unintelligent computer program.

Browser compatibility and OS compatiblity are just things you have to try out yourself on various systems. Even when a program tries to emulate the renderer of IE6, etc... it often does not inherit the wonderful nuances of IE's behaviour, such as the peek-a-boo bug when you resize the window or click something.

Result: 477 Errors, 214 warning(s)
Address: http://qgl.ausforums.com

I lol'd

For the record, I have coded my website clean as f*** and I get:

Errors found while checking this document as XHTML 1.0 Transitional!
Result: 17 Errors, 4 warning(s)

There are many ways to judge a website's quality, most of these ways cannot be reproduced via a computer algorithm. The w3c validator is an example of an exception to this - but even so, there is no law or anything that says your website must be w3c compliant,

well, arguably it doesn't judge quality, just compliance to the HTML specification

i have to make an SLA and what ever i decide to put in must be measurable.. so i can say the code must be to w3c standards.. and i can use the validator to check..

so quality of the site is determined by what marketing and brand have decided on.. not really my dept.. but i have to say.. well it needs to also be coded to a standard and this is how i'm going to check against that standard.

if there were other tools i would use them as well and incorporate them into the SLA's

i know the one your talking about trog, this one http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/

i just wasnt sure how good it was in real world situations

As mentioned, compliance of your website markup to standards is an entirely different thing to the quality of the website. Or rather, its only a small step towards it (and invisible to end-users as long as compliant/non-compliant code generates the same results).

I usually do markup in XTHML as it forces me to do strict XML markup and not be a lazy prick and rely on browser's letting poor markup through.

well i have to check both.. if links arnt working.. thats a quality issue.. if the code isnt up to scratch thats a compliance issue

what i dont really need to check is the quality of the content.. for example if a picture looks pretty.. but i do need to make sure the colours used are web safe etc

That w3 site is so annal retentive... my default page which has one line "hello world" managed to clocked 2 errors and 3 warnings LOL - WTF?!?

That Yslow tool is pretty nifty.

but i do need to make sure the colours used are web safe etc

http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/style/color/wheel.html

I think like anything there are extremes to conformance, and always constrained by financial resources in practical terms.

Test-driven development anyone?

Cool colour wheel Mantorok. I use this for my colours too: http://www.colorschemer.com/schemes/

but i do need to make sure the colours used are web safe etc

Just use 16 colour GIF and you're set.

well, arguably it doesn't judge quality, just compliance to the HTML specification

As mentioned, compliance of your website markup to standards is an entirely different thing to the quality of the website.

You guys are missing the whole point of my post about "many ways to judge a website's quality". Quality can include anything from compliance with standards, how the website affects you emotionally, how profitable the website is, how well supported the font or color scheme is that the website uses. Quality is any critera YOU choose to rate your website by - and most of the important ones are human-oriented qualities - nothing something a computer can judge.

Hopefully my previous post makes more sense now.

That w3 site is so annal retentive... my default page which has one line "hello world" managed to clocked 2 errors and 3 warnings LOL - WTF?!?

Yeah it gets rather pedantic at times. It likes you to have character encodings listed and it even bitched at me because I didn't have a <title> tag.

Have fun coding forms properly and conforming with accessibility standards <label for="IdOfFormItem">

I once had to convert an entire application to w3c xhtml and accessibility guidelines, wasn't fun..