HTML Toolbox Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why do you need my email address?

A: We may contact you regarding problems on your site or announcements about new features. Your address is kept strictly confidential and not sold or distributed.

Q: What exactly is a Web robot?

A: A Web robot is any automated program which requests HTML files from a server. A robot typically processes these files to find links to other Web pages, then processes these pages too.

Q: Aren't Web robots controversial?

A: Robots are a fact of life on the Internet. If you've used Lycos, Alta Vista, InfoSeek or any other search engine, you've tapped into databases which were generated using robots. Robots are software tools. They are not inherently good or bad. However, poorly written robots can do serious damage to a Web site. Since a robot is an automated program, it can submit HTTP requests to a server at a very, very fast rate. This can overload the server to the point where it can't respond to requests from real human beings using real Web browsers. The solution to this is for the robot to take its time processing your Web site. Our robots pause between each access to your site. That means it will take time to process your entire site, but the alternative could be serious for you and anyone else sharing your server.

Q: Will your robot download a copy of itself to my machine?

A: No. Our robots run on our server only.

Q: Why does my job take so long? Is there any way I can speed it up?

A: We could process your job more quickly, but only at the risk of overloading your server. For reasons described above we pause between fetching each page from your site. The pause time is shorter when you submit a foreground job, but we encourage you to submit your job in the background all the same. If you can't wait an hour for your results, you must really be in a hurry.

Q: Do you observe the robot exclusion standard?

A: Yes. The Robot Exclusion Standard is a mechanism to ensure that robots do not visit sites or portions of sites where they are not wanted. If you want to keep robots away, place a "robots.txt" file in your domain root.

Q: How do I set up a robot exclusion file?

A: For a detailed description on how to create a "robots.txt" file see the Standard for Robot Exclusion. Here is a quick summary.

The "robots.txt" file is the standard method for the Webmaster to tell a robot to not index a site. The Webmaster can designate which specific agent is excluded or conversely tell all agents they are not allowed.

Setting up a "robots.txt" file is very easy and straightforward. In fact, there are only two parts to the "robots.txt" file: User-agent lines and Disallow lines. The first part, the User-agent lines, lets you specify robots or search engines that should obey the following lines. If you want all robots to obey, you use the wildcard * to mean every robot. This is the most common use, although you can specify specific robots. The second part of the "robots.txt" file is the Disallow lines. Here you enter the specific directories or file names you don't want accessed. You can enter / to mean your whole site, or enter a subdirectory (such as /cgi-bin) to exclude robots only from certain areas of your site. In this example, the Webmaster didn't want any robots to visit any page on the site:

   User-agent: *
   Disallow: /

If you want to exclude us specifically, set a User-agent line to "NetMechanic" as in the example below.

   User-agent: NetMechanic
   Disallow: /

Another example. Here we want to exclude all robots except NetMechanic:

   #NetMechanic is allowed in
   User-agent: NetMechanic
   Disallow:
   #all others are excluded
   User-agent: *
   Disallow: /

Q: How large a site can you process?

A: We currently limit site processing to 400 HTML files or 5000 links for our subscription service, whichever comes first. Our free sample is limited to 5 pages and 25 links per page.

Q: Do you test password-protected sites?

A: Yes, we can test sites using htaccess password protection, so long as the "basic" authentication method is used. To test a password-protected site, enter your URL in this form:

   http://username:password@www.domainname.com

Keep in mind that your password will be transmitted over an open network in unencoded format. NetMechanic is not responsible for the security of your site. We recommend methods other than htaccess to protect highly sensitive information.

Q: Why can't I edit the URL in my HTML Toolbox account?

A: NetMechanic services are set up on a per URL basis. Once you enter the URL for testing, it cannot be modified. If you would like to initiate testing on a new or modified version of your current URL, you will need to add this URL to your account.

Q: Why are you having trouble testing my URL? I know it works.

A: The most common problem we encounter when trying to test a URL is "user input error". Problems arise when the URL has additional spaces, incorrect spelling, unacceptable characters in the URL, or if your site takes a long time to load. If NetMechanic is having difficulty testing your site and you know it works, we recommend that you enter your URL in your browser. When your site comes up in the browser, either cut or copy your URL and paste it into the appropriate location of our site. NetMechanic provides http:// on our forms. Please ensure that your submission does not have double http:// when entering your URL for testing. We do not test Java.

Q: I logged into my NetMechanic Pro account and tried to test my site, and was sent to a page that wanted my Credit Card information again.....I am ALREADY a paid member...you can see this by one of my URL's being active. Why do I have to pay you again?

A:NetMechanic services are set up on a "per URL" basis. Each URL in you NetMechanic account will be charged individually depending on the size of your website and/or service you are using.

A: Can I use your tool set on my Intranet site? This site is not accessible from the Internet and I would like to be able to download a tool set that can perform the same functionality as the Internet tool set. Is this possible?

A: I am sorry. NetMechanic tools are only available via the WWW. We do not have packaged versions of our tools available for sale.

Q: I just tested my URL with NetMechanic and it only checked my first page. Why didn't you check them all?

A: Many sites have splash pages and/or Shock or Flash pages as entry pages to their website. These pages make it difficult to test your website effectively. When entering your URL for testing please ensure the testing begins "after" the splash pages. Usually entering http://www.mysite.com/index.html will allow for more accurate testing.

Q: I have tried logging into my NetMechanic account using the User Name and Password you sent me in a confirmation e-mail Yet, it still doesn't work. Are you having problems with your system?

A: NetMechanic log in features are case sensitive. Please ensure that you have no extra spaces or capitalized letter in your User Name and Password information. Also, don't forget to select the proper tool that you have signed up for. Many times users select the wrong tool and the log in process returns an error message.

Q: I am preparing a re-launch of my web site and need to cancel my NetMechanic account and/or delete the URL that is being tested. How do I do this?

A: When canceling an account or removing a URL from testing all you need to do is the following: 

• Log into your account with your User Name and Password.
• Once in your account select the "Delete Toolbox Subscription" link.
• You will be asked if you are sure you want to delete the URL. Select Yes.
• Once all the URL's are deleted from your account you will no longer have any billable events against your method of payment. Your User Name and Password will remain active in case you desire testing at a later date.

Q: What do you mean by "100 pages or frames" and "400 pages or frames?"

A: Toolbox's cost is based on the number of HTML files in your site. If your site doesn't use frames, then the number of HTML files equals the number of Web pages in your site. However, if your site uses HTML frames, the number of files will be slightly more than the number of pages, depending on how your pages are set up.

Q: Does your service support https:// web sites?

A: Yes! Our HTML Toolbox Advanced Gold and Platinum offerings support https:// web sites, as does our enterprise level product, WebIntegrity.

Q: I need my HTML Toolbox result e-mail mailed to (2) two different e-mail address. Can you tell me how?

A: Our HTML toolbox service is not set up for multiple email address delivery. Please select the most appropriate email address and we will send your results to that address. Upon receipt of the results message, feel free to forward it to whomever you desire. HTML Toolbox Gold and Platinum as well as WebIntegrity allow multiple email addresses.

Q: How are the ratings derived for the different tools in HTML Toolbox?

A: Each of the five tools contained in HTML Toolbox have their own rating criteria. Here is a breakout of each tool's system.

Link Check Rating
Your page rating is based on the number of bad links on your page.
Ratings:

• 5 stars equal to 0 bad links
• 4 stars equal to 1 bad link
• 3 stars equal to 2 bad links
• 2 stars equal to 3 bad links
• 1 star has greater than 3 bad links

Load Time Rating
Your rating is based on the time required to load your page using a 28.8 modem. A 2 second connection time penalty is added for every Web server that must be accessed to load your page and its graphics.
Ratings:

• 5 stars - loads in less than or equal to 13 seconds
• 4 stars - loads in less than or equal to 24 seconds
• 3 stars - loads in less than or equal to 35 seconds
• 2 stars - loads in less than or equal to 46 seconds
• 1 star - loads in greater than 46 seconds

In addition, your rating will be lowered by 1 star if you have HTML problems on your page that affect load time.

To get a 5 star score, keep the size of your page and all its graphics below 40k, only connect to one Web server, and keep your page free of HTML errors.

HTML Check & Repair Rating
Your rating is based on the number of HTML errors found on the page.
Ratings:

• 5 stars equal to no errors
• 4 stars less than or equal to 6 errors
• 3 stars less than or equal to 12 errors
• 2 stars less than or equal to 18 errors
• 1 star greater than 18 errors

Browser Compatibility Rating
Your rating is based on the number of compatibility problems affecting more than 10% of your visitors.
Ratings:

• 5 stars equal to no compatibility problems
• 4 stars less than or equal to 4 problems
• 3 stars less than or equal to 8 problems
• 2 stars less than or equal to 12 problems
• 1 star greater than 12 problems

Spell Check Rating
Your rating is based on the percentage of suspected misspellings on your page.
Ratings:

• 5 stars equal to no misspellings
• 4 stars less than or equal to 5% misspellings
• 3 stars less than or equal to 10% misspellings
• 2 stars less than or equal to 15% misspellings
• 1 star greater than 15% misspellings

Q: What number is the maximum number of links NetMechanic will check for my subscription to HTML Toolbox?

A: A subscription with 1-100 pages will check "5,000" links. A subscription with 101-400 pages will check "10,000". Note that if you are a subscriber for 400 pages but run a job of 100 or less the scan will be limited to only "5,000" unique links.

Q:I have lost my username and password. How do I get it again?

A: If you are a direct NetMechanic customer you should have filled out a security question. Simply answer the information correctly at http://r.netmechanic.com/netmech_pro/forgot.cgi or read more at http://www.netmechanic.com/Problem.htm. If you are a NetMechanic customer through a reseller please contact your reseller for log in information.

Q: How do I update my email address or personal information within my account?

A:> Go to http://www.netmechanic.com/login.htm
Log into your account with user name and password.
Click the "Edit Profile" link in the top portion of your account control panel.
Make the necessary modifications within your account.
There is another location you may need to change your email address.
After logging into your account with your user name and password.
Click the Edit HTML Toolbox link if you have an active HTML Toolbox subscription.
Make the necessary changes.
Click Save configuration button.

Link Check

Q: The robot reported that my home page contains no links. What happened?

A: This is most likely due to network problems between your host and our host. Though this problem is rare, it does occur sometimes, usually for hosts outside the United States. If we fail to fetch your home page, we will try again up to a total of two retries. You will only get this message if all three tries failed.  In some cases this message is may be due to a link which we do not currently process. For example, if all the links from your home page are part of a server-side image map, we will report no links for the page.

HTML Check & Repair

Q: My page looks fine in Internet Explorer. Should I care about HTML validation?

A: That depends on what percentage of your audience you want to please. Validating your HTML increases the chance that your Web site will look good for 100% of your visitors. For more information view our Browser Tutorial.

Q: I ran a HTML Toolbox job and had the results emailed to me. Why doesn't the URL in the email work? I can't get the results to come up.

A: Due to the large number of tests using NetMechanic services, we must limit the time we keep your results on our server. We delete results after 3-4 days, or as space is needed. If your results were removed, we recommend you retest your site.

Q: What are Repairs?

A: Repairs are actions that HTML Repair performs to fix errors in your page. Sometimes HTML Repair has to make several repairs to fix a single error, and sometimes a repair action, such as moving a tag, may result in additional errors which must be fixed. You will see significant error repair actions listed in our HTML Repair Details report. Repairs which enforce good HTML coding practices, such as closing table data </TD> cells and list items </LI> elements, will not be shown. Showing these repairs would unnecessarily clutter the error report and obscure the significant warnings, errors, hints and repairs.

Q: Are there any limits on the size of the page submitted for review and repair?

A: Yes - Submitted pages must be less than 2000 lines and 125 Kbytes in size.

Q: If I enter my URL and press "Go", what will HTML Repair do?

A: HTML Repair will obtain the Web page specified by the URL and review the page for browser incompatibilities, coding errors, missing tags, and verify that you comply with the latest HTML 4.0 Standard. After it reviews your Web page, it will generate a report that summarizes its findings and shows you where the errors occurred in your HTML code.

Q: If I choose to repair my pages, will it automatically replace my existing HTML code on my current site with the repaired version?

A: No, it will create a repaired version of the page for viewing and downloading.

Q: Once I repair my page using HTML Repair, will I be able to view the new HTML code before downloading it to my Web site?

A: Yes. Select the "Compare Original and Repaired HTML Code" link on the HTML Repair Summary page to view the repaired code along side the original code.

Q: After I repair my page using HTML Repair, can I trash my original page code?

A: HTML Repair is an automated program. While safely handling most HTML errors, its repairs may sometimes alter your page layout. We strongly encourage you to save a backup copy of the original page and review the repaired page before installing it on your server.

Q: Do you guarantee that the repaired version of my HTML page will look identical to my original page?

A: No - We cannot guarantee they'll look identical. HTML Repair provides links to display the original and repaired versions of your Web page.

Q: What will HTML Repair show me if I choose the option to "Tell me if my page is friendly to disabled visitors"?

A: If selected, HTML Repair will display accessibility warning messages in addition to standard warning messages. They tell you if your page is friendly to disabled visitors who may use special browsers that read text instead of display images.

Q: What does the "Force Tags to Uppercase" option do?

A: If selected, all tags names will be printed in uppercase characters in the repaired file.

Q: What does the "Force Attributes to Uppercase" option do?

A: If selected, all attribute names will be printed in uppercase characters in the repaired file.

Q: What does the "Wrap script literals in quotes" option do?

A: If selected, long script literals appearing in script attributes will be wrapped to following lines by placing a backslash character before the line break.

Q: What does the "Output Numeric Rather than Named Entries" option do?

A: If selected, entities such as "<" will be written to the repaired file as numeric "&#060;" instead of the named entity "&lt;" form.

Q: What does the "Indent Element Content # Spaces" option do?

If selected, nested tags will be indented the specified number of spaces. To prevent indention select indent and enter 0 for spaces. By default the repaired HTML source code will be automatically indented according to tag content.

Q: What does the "Wrap Text at Column #" option do?

A: If selected, the specified number of columns will be used as the right hand margin in the repaired file. Lines greater than the number of columns will wrap to following lines. A value of zero (0) can be entered to disable text wrapping.

Q: What does the "Replace Tags I by EM and B by STRONG" option change?

A: If selected, all occurrences of I and B tags will be replaced by EM and STRONG tags respectively in the repaired file.

Q: What are Tags?

A: Tags are used to denote the various elements such as heads, tables, paragraphs, and lists in an HTML document. HTML tags consist of a left angle bracket (<), a tag name, and a right angle bracket (>). Tags are usually paired (e.g., <H1> and </H1>) to start and end the tag element. The end tag looks just like the start tag except a slash (/) precedes the tag name within the brackets.

Q: What does the "Replace FONT, NOBR and CENTER tags with CSS" option do?

A: If selected, the repaired file will contain Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) elements to replace occurrences of FONT, NOBR and CENTER tags.

Q: What is a Cascading Style Sheet?

A: Style sheets describe how documents are presented on screens, in print, or perhaps how they are pronounced. A CSS (or Cascading Style Sheet) is a style sheet mechanism that has been specifically developed to meet the needs of Web designers and users.

Q: What does the "Drop FONT and CENTER Tags" option do?

A: Instead of creating CSS elements for FONT and CENTER styles, the FONT and CENTER tags are not output to the repaired file.

Q: How do I save my repaired page?

Q: When you are ready to save the repaired page, click on the text link next to the disk icon that reads "Save your repaired page." Clicking on this link will bring up a box entitled "File Download" that offers you the option to save the file to your disk. Click on "OK" and a new box will appear entitled "Save As". In this box you will need to select where on your hard drive you wish to save the repaired file. You will also want to give the file a name. We recommend you make a backup of your original file before you replace it with the new repaired file. As with any automated program, the corrections made by HTML Repair should be reviewed to ensure appropriateness. Making a backup before you make changes is always recommended even when hand editing. After saving the file to your hard drive you are ready to transfer or upload the file to the server where your Web site resides.

Q:How do I upload a file to my server?

A: After you have finished working on an HTML file and have saved the file to your hard drive, the next step is to transfer the file from your hard drive to the server where your Web site is hosted. This transfer is often referred to as "uploading" your file. If you use an HTML editor like Composer or Frontpage, check with the software help file to see if they have a publish feature that will transfer files for you. The transfer of the files between computers (in this case between your hard drive and your Web site server) is normally done using an application-level protocol called File Transfer Protocol or FTP. In the old days users had to use the command-line interface of FTP, but now there are numerous graphical user interface (GUI) versions of FTP that allow the user to drag and drop files into the correct directory on the server without knowing UNIX. If your would like to try a GUI version of FTP some popular ones for the PC are CuteFTP and WSFTP. There is a tutorial for CuteFTP on WebMonkey. For MAC users there is a friendly GUI version of FTP called Fetch. There is a tutorial for Fetch located on WebMonkey.

Q: There is no way for me to repair my HTML in the HTML Check and Repair feature. Why?

A: The HTML Check and Repair graphic centers itself to your HTML code. If your code is extremely long the graphic will center itself to the codes length. To find the graphic simply scroll to the right then follow the subsequent directions.

Load Time Check

Q: Why does the number of server connections affect my page load time?

When your browser downloads a Web page, it must first open a network connection to the Web server. Once the connection is open, the browser can download multiple objects -- such as HTML files, image files, or audio files -- from a single connection. However, if your page includes objects that reside on several different Web servers, the browser must open a network connection to each of these servers. Each one of these connections takes about two seconds to establish and adds to your page load time.

Q: My Web page is small and doesn't include many graphics, but you still didn't give me the highest possible load time rating. Why?

A: We lower your page's load time rating by one level if it includes HTML problems, such as an image that doesn't have HEIGHT or WIDTH attributes. Correct these problems to get our highest rating.

Q: Why do HTML problems affect my page's load time?

A: Graphics are usually the largest objects in a Web page. If you use height and width attributes with your IMG tags, the browser allocates image space in the layout. It can then draw the rest of the page while the image is loading displaying the page more quickly.

Q: Why do I sometimes get a size of "-1 " reported for some of my graphics?

A: We determine the size of your images from information provided in the HTTP response header. Though the vast majority of servers supply this information, some do not. As a result we cannot measure the size of these graphics. You may see this situation with graphics generated by a CGI script, such as those used by some banner advertising networks or hit counters.

Q: Why do you report a frame for my page when I don't use frames?

A: Many advertising networks imbed their banner ads inside an IFRAME tag. This allows them to run "rich media" ads on your page. Since these really are frames, we report them as such.

Q: I ran a "whole site" job, but you only reported the load time for some of my pages. Why?

A: We currently limit the number of pages and links that our service will test. If one of your pages contains objects that we did not test because of this limit, we will not report the load time for that page.

Q: How exactly do you determine load time over different connections? Do you physically check load time over each different kind of connection, or do you check one connection speed and use a formula to extrapolate the data? If the latter is true, what connection speed do you actually check at?

A: The formula is used by taking the total number of bytes of the page, dividing it by the connection speed, and adding two seconds for each additional server connected.

Spell Check

Q: What is Spell Check? 

A: Spell Check is an automated tool that will visit one or all of your web pages and check the text on the page for spelling errors. You may run this test in the foreground (i.e. while you wait), or in the background and have an email report sent to you automatically when the run finishes.

Q: What is a Custom Dictionary? 

A: A Custom Dictionary is an unique feature of NetMechanic's Spell Check. The Custom Dictionary allows you to add to the list of known words in the dictionary. Proper names, technical terms, and foreign phrases may be added to the dictionary.

Q: How do I create a Custom Dictionary?

A: Create a file on your server to serve as the custom dictionary. For each word you want to add, place it on a separate line in your dictionary file. Enter your dictionary URL on the submission page and NetMechanic does the rest.

Q: Why does your spell check return errors like Netscape, Microsoft, StoreFront, FrontPage, etc. ?

A: NetMechanic uses the UNIX version of aspell as the default dictionary. We often update the default dictionary to accommodate new and frequently used terms that are used in business applications worldwide. NetMechanic service does allow you to create a Custom Dictionary. This allows you to add to the list of known words in the dictionary. Simply create a file (perhaps called dictionary.txt) on your web server that will serve as a custom dictionary. For each word you want to add to your dictionary, place it on a line by itself in your dictionary file. Enter the URL of your dictionary file on the submission page, and our robots will take care of the rest.

Q: Does spell checker support different languages?

A: Yes. You can customize your dictionary or choose from English-USA, English-Canadian, English UK, French-France, French-Swiss, German-Germany, German-Swiss, Italian, Portuguese-Brazil, Portuguese-Portugal, and Spanish.

Q: What type of encoding does spell checker use?

A: Spell checker uses Character Encoding ISO 8859. It does not support UTF8 or Unicode.

Browser Compatibility

Q: What is Browser Compatibility?

A: Browser Compatibility is a tool that tells you which of your HTML tags are supported by each version of the major browsers.

Q: How is this tool different from HTML Check?

A: HTML Check tells you how well your code conforms to HTML standards. Browser Compatibility tells you how much of your HTML code is supported by each version of various browsers. Not all browsers support HTML 4 standards and older browsers may not support commonly used tags.

Q: How is my grade determined? 

A: We based your grade on the total number of compatibility problems we find on the page. However, in doing this we only count problems that affect at least 10% of your visitors. Using this approach means that we place a lesser weight on very old browsers that may have a lot of compatibility problems, but which are used by only a small percentage of your site's visitors.

Q: Why are some of my problems highlighted in bold text?

A: Any problem that affects 10% or more of your visitors will be listed in bold text.

Q: What does the Browser Types Calculator do?

A: We try to tell you how many of your site's visitors are affected by each problem we find. So if a tag isn't supported by Internet Explorer and this browser makes up 5% and 10% of your visitors, then 15% of your visitors are affected.

GIFBot

Q. How does GIFBot work?

A. GIFBot takes two different approaches to reducing image size. For GIFs, it selectively combines lesser-used colors to reduce palette size and increase compression algorithm efficiency. But, it uses JPEGs ability to select compression quality. The lower the quality, the smaller the file size, but the more pronounced the image differences. For GIFs in the GIF89a format, we preserve animation and transparency. JPEGs are saved in the progressive JPEG format.

Q. You say you are reducing the size of my image, but it still looks the same size on the screen. What's going on?

A. We don't rescale the size of the displayed image. Instead GIFBot reduces the number of bytes needed to store the image on disk (or to transmit the image to viewers). Since the image is smaller, the Web page will load faster.

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