Sometimes I am lazy about the code quality of my own pages. If all the browsers are showing the page as expected and visitors are able to get my site content, I can live with some “not-valid” piece of code. But it’s me. When working for clients, I am always checking the validity of the code (and the site ata all). Everything must pass the standard validation tests. And speaking of standards, here is the list of the 5 test tools I am using (almost) every day:

1) The W3C Markup Validator

This is the validator. If you never checked your site’s code against this validator — go and do it. It is not just a validation service, it’s a learning tool too. After fixing the same type of error several times, I tend to avoid the wrong code in future. In brief — this (and all) W3 Validators are the industry standard for testing against the industry standards

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I am using a bunch of testing tools on a daily basis. In the comming days I’ll publish several lists with my favorite test tools, starting today with my list of speed testing utilities.

Online Site Speed & Performance Test Tools:

These are “real-life” testing utilities. In general, you enter the URL, select among servers/locations, click a button and get the report (after some time of waiting for the actual test  to be performed). The advantage of these tools is that you can check the load speed of your site from different locations (different servers in different countries).

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From time to time I receive sad/angry/informative messages from users that some antivirus scanner is reporting my programs as virus or trojan or suspicious file. Obviously those are “false positives” (the AV vendors are using this euphemism to replace “lies”). I have no idea why that happens. In the past I was publishing unsigned setup files, which could be part of the problem. But now everything is signed with my digital signature. The only reason for this to happen is the paranoid nature of some antivirus programs. Yesterday I had to deal with disappointed user who purchased my program just to see Nor**n saying it’s a virus and to stop the tool from working. I refunded the money, but no one could remove the bad taste feeling can’t be cured neither for me nor the user. According to nor**n, this tool is “suspicious” because is not very popular. Boy! I am writing niche software, I never intended to be popular with these tools. DrW*b directly says (lies) there is a virus in other of the tools I am publishing. Why? What virus? Kas***sky isn’t right now reporting any of my tools as virus, but it did that several times in the past… What is this? Why are antivirus programs lying about my programs?

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In the last 10 years I am dealing a lot with download sites. Each title must be submitted to hundreds and even thousands sites. sometimes they are accepting my submissions, sometimes they are rejecting, but the people behind one site managed to surprise me. I never expected someone to contact me via email and ask for additional info. That means that someone is actually careful whit this site. They are checking what to list, contacting the developer. And this is the link if you are curious which one this site is: LifetimeUpgrades.com

You changed my life.

And you’ll never be forgotten.

http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/

You asked, I did it: the Duplicates Finder tool now comes with “ignore case” option:

http://wonderwebware.com/duplicatefinder

Yes! 4 months later, the new version of Screen Ruler is ready and published. A lot of good news (download and try in order to see all the changes) and one not-so-good piece of news (it looks like it is not free anymore)… Here is the download page: /screen-ruler-pro/

Direct download links below (fully-functional free trial version):

MS Windows XP, Vista, 7 (4.9MB; 32bit):

Mac OS X 10.5+ / Intel (13.6MB; 64bit):

One old goal is now fact: I got the under 100K Alexa rating, eventually, not much sure what that means, but it should be noted… (I am not sure why I was waiting for this in the last 3 years, probably something in Alexa gave me this number as a “goal”, now, when I saw this for first time, I felt I must be happy, although I don’t even remember why )As you probably already noted, I was fixing the site in the last days. Broken links, bad behavior in small resolutions and so on. However, I think it is fixed now and the new look should be labelled as “ready” with the start of the new month… New month, new look, new luck Now, I am on my road to get several important decisions about the close future. Which tool must get the priority? the css menu generator? The shaker? The new sitemap generator or the good old screen ruler? … There are some important (for me) considerations: should I continue with the current codebase? Should I start with MS Visual Studio? Or why not Qt? Am I planning cross-platform versions? Should I “commercialize”  the site a little (in order to make it possible to move it to dedicated hosting and purchase some goods that will make the whole project better)… Well, I am pretty sure all these are not important for you, but I am writing in this blog not only for the visitors — as it was said once: verba volant, scripta manent, so — for my own future reference — let it be written…Ok, that’s all for now. Let us hope we will have more good news very soon.

I received, again, a note from user that Sitemap Generator includes Virus/Trojan. In the last years I saw this situation several times, and I didn’t even ask him which antivirus solution trigerred the false alarm (they call it “false positive”, but that phrase is ridiculous because there is nothing positive when you accuse someone that he put virus in his program). I know, already, that in 99% of the cases it is Kaspersky. I suppose it is great antivirus scanner, but I am little tired to repack and repack this toy with different setup compilers and compression just to get rid of their fake alerts… Anyway, I repacked the tool, again, with different version of the crawler component and with different compression level, and right at this moment it says everything is OK (I am testing all of my programs with virustotal, the link for this particular test is here) but no one could say how long it will take before Kaspersky start again to alarm you that there is a Trojan or Virus inside the setup. So, if/when that happens — please, let me know. I will try, again, to fix the setup to fit their algorithm. Meanwhile, I am starting to think — should I get a MS certificate for these tools? Could that help in such situations?…However, the quick fix I can (and will) do is to add CNET button to every download page — they (CNET) are saying that everything hosted on download.com is tested for viruses and spyware, so that could be additional level of security for these visitors who don’t know should they believe me or not.Finally, why on earth I am writing this post? My family, so far, is not “Kaspersky”, so, I should not get such thing so seriously… but because I already wrote the post, let me leave it here for future reference…

Finally I found the time in the last two days to play around and eventually change the good old wonderwebware template with something new. I know the black background isn’t the most loved background on earth, and I am not big fan of dark sites… however, it looks like I found a way to use black background without killing the readability of the template… Ok, let us hope you will not hate the new look…