Sometimes when performance testing you need to do some research into other websites so you can make predictions on how people will use yours. This can be a time consuming. You need to think of sites that will have similar users with similar usage patterns. They need to be roughly the same size and scope for the data to be transferable. It's not easy.

Once you've thought of some sites, you then need to get stats. There are a lot of ways and places to get those stats. Some of them reputable, some of them not. One place I turn to for some basic stats is Alexa. They seem to have good data, it's a very easy site to use, and I always find out a bit more than I was looking for.

Found a cool W3C website for checking if your website is mobile friendly. Just enter the website and go.

As you can see from the image, QuickTestingTips didn't do so well. Apparently our page is too big (over 20k) and the theme we use has some tags that are apparently read as popups by the scanner. (I couldn't figure out why, and my iPhone loads the site just fine... so whatever.)

Well, it's probably not perfect. But what tool is right? It seems like a handy (free) place to start. Give it a try and see what you find.

Today I needed to generate random names for test data.  I found this free random name generator. See: http://www.neoprogrammics.com/randomisers/random_names_generator/

I typically use BB TestAssistant or iShowU for screen capture, but I sometimes recommend CamStudio for those looking for an open source solution to screen capture. CamStudio records screen and audio activity on your computer and creates AVI/SWF files. Software like this is great for exploratory testing, recreating bugs, or building training.

Found a new free fuzzing tool by Microsoft called MiniFuzz. From the site:

MiniFuzz is a very simple fuzzer designed to ease adoption of fuzz testing by non-security people who are unfamiliar with file fuzzing tools or have never used them in their current software development processes.

While it's focused specifically on file-handling, it's relatively easy to get setup and use. I don't use Visual Studio, but apparently, you can also use it as a VS add-on.