- From: Wendy A Chisholm <wendy@w3.org>
- Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 13:09:26 -0400
- To: w3c-wai-er-ig@w3.org
Hello, In working on an action item for EO I've found some interesting information about X3D conformance testing. It's inspired some random thoughts.... The Web3D consortium, the group of people working on 3D graphics on the Web (the evolution of VRML) has been testing both content and user agents for conformance. more info at http://www.web3d.org/TaskGroups/x3d/slides/KassConformanceX3dMarch1999/index .htm (note that these are powerpoint slides that have been saved as images - grrrr) I haven't come across details yet, but the are doing some ECMA/JavaScript testing. NIST has a tool called Viper...NIST is also the group of people that created WebMetrics. Before VRML evolved into X3D, there were conformance testing tools. Some of which had over 4000 automated tests. The current test suite is available from http://xsun.sdct.itl.nist.gov/~mkass/x3d/html (NIST) interesting piece from the documentation: <blockquote> The fact that a VRML scene may be static, dynamic, 3-dimensional and/or contain sound, necessitates human visual interpretation. Consider a "dotted line", a "green" box, a "barking" sound, all common-sense vocabulary of human visual and audio perception. Barring exotic technology or extreme measures, we must rely on human operators and their ability to "recognize" these terms. To minimize the subjectivity inherent in testing browsers, careful consideration must be given to the test file design and criteria for evaluating the tests. ... By reviewing the testable areas that were apparent from the VRML specification, we developed a model that provided some guidance in the construction of test cases, rather than approaching these categories in an ad hoc fashion. Three major design considerations arose from our review of testing methodologies: Design metafile testing using concepts derived from syntax testing, which is realized through the development of a reference parser. The parser should be extended to include useful graphical user interface concepts. Design browser conformance tests using concepts derived from logical inferencing. These concepts can be used as guiding principles for the creation of semantic requirements and actual test case generation. Design an interactive testing capability to address the problems associated in testing graphics standards. The interface should make use of concepts from other computer science disciplines, including database, WWW, and human-computer interface technologies. </blockquote> It is interesting to consider. Personally, I never thought about testing browser implementations. I do not think that we should, yet in a way to satisfy the "until user agents" clauses of WCAG 1.0, we almost need to incorporate some knowledge of browser renderings into our tests. This is obviously nothing new. Bobby already allows this by letting the user select versions of various browsers. Also, we have "lynx-me" type services that allow authors to see how pages may be rendered in lynx. just some thoughts, --wendy -- wendy a chisholm world wide web consortium web accessibility initiative madison, wi usa tel: +1 608 663 6346 /--
Received on Friday, 28 April 2000 13:06:29 UTC