Today in our Web Developers meeting, I discussed the various online tools that many campus developers have become accustomed to using in the Bengal environment but that are no longer available in the VH-Dev environment, due to the fact that VH-Dev is locked down to campus-only. The two bigs ones are W3C.org's Markup Validation Service, and HiSoftware's Cynthia Says Accessibility checker.
The Division of IT has been very cordial and willing to assist us in regaining access to these tools, as long as we can give them a list of sites we need access to. In addition to these two sites, I suggested that we add the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Functional Accessibility Evaluator (http://fae.cita.uiuc.edu/). Like Cynthia Says, the non-registered site will only allow you to test one page at a time. However, unlike Cynthia Says, you are not limited to one-check-per-url-per-minute, and once you are registered, the FAE will allow you to evaluate multiple URLS, and allow you to include up to 3 levels deep in your site architecture.
In addition, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign also offers a Firefox add-on version of the FAE (http://firefox.cita.uiuc.edu/) which provides a whole host of tools to check accessibility issues on any page you are viewing, and allows you to test dynamically altered (via Javascript) pages for accessibility issues.
Charlie Triplett suggested we also add Geotek's IE Netrender service (http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/index.php). The IE Netrender captures a screen shot of what your site looks like in Internet Explorer from version 5.5 through 8 beta 1. This is especially great for those who are developing on a Mac and don't have access to IE, or for those who are on a PC who no longer have access to IE6 and/or don't want to install the beta of IE8. Thanks Charlie!!!
If there are additional tools/services that are unavailable to you in the VH-Dev environment, that you would like to use, please contact me and I'll take it forward to the Division of IT.
I also demo'd the HTML Validator Firefox add-on (http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/), which allows you to see, at a glance, how many errors/warnings the page you are currently viewing contains. Viewing the source of the page then lists out all errors/warnings, the line number where the error/warning occurs, why there is an error/warning, and suggests a solution. In my opinion, this is much easier than using the W3c.org Validator as the validation of the page is immediate and doesn't require you to submit the page; it's all local.
I'll also take this moment to (yet again) plug the Firebug add-on for Firefox (http://www.getfirebug.com/). From its javascript debugger, to being able to dynamically alter HTML and CSS, to telling you exactly which CSS rules affect the styling of the element you are inspecting, Firebug is an invaluable tool when trying to track down problems with your web page. While historically it has been a Firefox add-on, there's also an option for using it in Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, etc.: http://www.getfirebug.com/lite.html
Maybe I should do a demo on Firebug at a future Web Dev meeting. Any interest?
YUI Theater has a good video showing Firebug highlights: http://video.yahoo.com/watch/111597