WebSighting Special – SiteVista Review

One of my WebSighting agents; CSSBeauty, one day featured a website called SiteVista. It’s simple design accompanied with curves and a tasty fruit was a website I could guarantee not many would find difficult surfing.

So what does Sitevista do?
In my own words, I’d describe it as an offered online service that works like SnagIt but much cooler and more functional. It’s not a revolutionary service and some might have seen something like this before. Sitevista’s cool factor allows you to visually troubleshoot a website you’re developing on several browsers ranging from Internet Explorer 4 to Mozilla to Netscape Navigator 4 and even Safari.

But wait, there’s more of that icy cool factor offered. You could view your website in resolutions from 640*480 to 1024*768. No more needing to switch your monitor resolution back and forth. Oh yeah, psstt.. you can even view your website in 256 colors too. Now, is that cool or what? And you won’t believe this, but it’s still not done. They’re soon going to offer a screen reader test, a color blindness test (yes, believe it!) and other nifty tests.

I promised Paul I was going to review the website and the service overall once it’s been officially launched so please read on for the review. :)

You’re greeted with an ultra slick interface for a homepage. Right in your face, you have an image hinting what SiteVista is all about, the superb price for the service (payable with PayPal) and a sidebar with a link to a screencast to learn how to use the service. But trust me, with a sharp website like this and simpler than simple interface, you don’t even need the video. Give it less than 5-minutes and I’m sure you’ll be able to be on your way. Don’t believe me? View the screenshot, HERE.

On the website, I noticed the only way to login was via the link available on the homepage. I was expecting a login panel or static link on the navigation bar so I could login from almost anywhere. Minor issue and easy to be implemented. So no worries, Paul. :)

The Features page is a quick breakdown of what you’ll be getting when you’ve sign up for the service. If you click Demo Video, it’s the screencast performed by Paul. Click HERE to view a screenshot of the video. The Buzz is a page filled with quotes by some recognized voices online. I hope I can be one of em. *grin* The Blog speaks for itself and do visit there from time to time to find out latest updates to the service. The last link; Pricing and Sign up doesn’t need any explaining but just viewing what are the offers being promoted currently.

I got an exclusive pre-launch login when I offered to fully review the website as well as the service. When you login, the simplicity of the service doesn’t run off the block at all. You’re still stuck with the user-friendly website as before. Click HERE to peek at what it looks like for the members homepage. From the screenshot you could see how easy is the service. In the navigation bar it’s like a 1-2-3 process on its own.

So we’re working on a website project and we need to test it on multiple browsers as well as on different resolutions, what do we do? Well, all we need to do is check on the options we want to run the test on and just click one button. Boom! Too easy? Well, click HERE and see for yourself.

Now you just wait for an email notification for your results or click the first item on the View Previous Tests link. Paul’s going to number or alter the way the list is arranged later to make it more explanatory in future. While the test is on going, you’ll be looking at a results page like this, HERE. If you’ve noticed there’s been an extensive thought of displaying the progress of each result. The circular thing means in progress and the exclamation sign defines an error occured while processing the results. On top of that, below the type of browser there’s a very short report about the test status.

Navigate using the tabs of what results you wish to view. There’s browsers, resolutions and colors only currently. More will be added as much more tools are incorporated.

From what Paul explained to me, the list in View Previous Tests would accumulate to a certain total and possibly cleared later. Check the blog for more updates later. The Statistics link will show you a demographic of browser popularity by the percentage. Pretty handy to know what browser you should mainly concentrate on. ;)

The Your Account and Purchase page doesn’t need any explaining from me since you already can assume the standard content. And that concludes our journey of the SiteVista service offered. On the other hand, here’s some results of dannyfoo.com on some of the browsers acquired by SiteVista. And I just noticed it’s really messed up on older browsers. Bummer!

• Internet Explorer 4
• Internet Explorer 5.5
• Netscape Navigator 4
• 640*480 Window
• 640*480 Full Screen
• 800*600 Window
• 256 Colors

I hope you’ve enjoyed the full review of the SiteVista website and service as much I loved trying it out. :)

p/s: I forgot to mention that you can view the screenshot results as a normal window or full screen too.

*note: Sorry for the opening as a new HTML page. I think after the cPanel update, my Image::Magick module disappeared somewhere. :S