PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide an update on previous surveys that have looked at the quality of HTML documents on the worldwide web. Previous surveys have indicated that the quality of HTML documents tends to be quite poor, with most documents containing defects.Design/methodology/approachTo determine the extent of this problem, the paper undertook a large‐scale study of HTML document quality among the most popular web sites (approximately 100,000).FindingsThis paper found that the vast majority (over 95 per cent) of web sites did not adhere to the worldwide web consortium standards for HTML.Research limitations/implicationsThis study represents a single investigation over a short timeframe. Hence, ideally the study needs to be replicated in the future to help generalise the findings.Practical implicationsSuch poor quality may jeopardise the security or usability of a web site, making the site's users vulnerable to malware attacks. This poor level of quality has drastic implications for web usability and security.Originality/valueThis new survey undertook a more extensive examination of popular web sites than previous surveys.
The construction and testing of Web-based systems has become more complex and challenging with continual innovations in technology. One major concern particularly for the deployment of mission critical applications is security. In Web-based systems, the principal vulnerabilities revolve around deficient input validation. This chapter describes a partially automated mechanism, the tool InputValidator, which seeks to address this issue through bypassing client-side checking and sending test data directly to the server to test the robustness and security of the back-end software. The tool allows a user to construct, execute and evaluate a number of test cases through a form-filling exercise instead of writing bespoke test code.
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