Greytower has launched a new information site - http://www.sitesifter.co.uk - which has as its primary focus providing potential clients, journalists, and the simply curious data regarding the siteSifter quality assessment system. Here you'll find price information, details of features, and background information.

The 2.9p12 revision of siteSifter Journal is scheduled for release on the 8th of May 2008 - while mainly a performance-related version, some new and useful features have been included, such as the new Analytics baseline.

With the Candidate Recommendation release of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) revision 2.0 by the W3C, Greytower has begun work on a WCAG 2 baseline which, when completed, will give all users of siteSifter Journal the ability to automatically assess those parts of WCAG 2.0 which are programmatically testable. We will keep you informed on our progress, and plan to give access to the baseline soon.

With the release of the most stable and functional version of siteSifter ever, Greytower has also created a free, one-shot, one-page testing service for the WCAG 1.0 AAA baseline - siteSifter Lite. With this you can try before buying, and test pages through an easy to use minimalistic interface. Go on - you know you want to!

The LinkRot baseline, used to test whether or not links point to the correct place, has been rewritten from scratch, and now offers even more functionality. From a humble beginning with testing only regular links, it now checks any URI found in HTML, XHTML and CSS - including @import-ed CSS - as well as in DOCTYPEs. A new report format has been created, so that users can have the test results in neat CSV columns for import into spreadsheets. The HTML-based report has also been revamped to include explanations, line numbers, and a new layout.

Just a little over a month after the latest draft release of the WCAG 2.0 recommendations from the W3C, siteSifter is updated to support the new standard. Even though the final version of WCAG 2 won't be with us for another four or five months, SSX offer support - and continous updates to that support - for the baseline as of August 2008.

With the new release of the WCAG 2.0 specification as a Proposed Recommendation, we here at Greytower has updated our support for these guidelines. As of version 2.9p29 of siteSifter, the WCAG 2 checkpoints has been revised and refined. Go on, try it out at siteSifter Lite and tell us what you think - info@greytower.net!

2009 looks to be an interesting year indeed for Greytower and siteSifter. We plan on introducing a number of new features, and continue improving those which already exist. The first step in this process is the release of 2.9p32; a maintenance release focusing on speed and stability. It also pave the way for new and exciting features to arrive during March 2009.

Support for the machine-testable checkpoints in the US Government standard known as "Section 508" has been added to siteSifter. This is part of our ongoing work to support as many standards and regulations as possible. We aim to, in the future, add support for even more tests and recommendations.

In our constant effort to improve on siteSifter we have, on the 5^th of March 2009, released siteSifter 2.9p34. Primarily a maintenance release it not only fixes a few bugs, but improves stability and introduce a brand new graphical interface.

Greytower Technologies released siteSifter 2.9p35 on the 19th of March 2009. The release is automatic for all users, although client-specific themes and settings are of course not touched. There are many exciting features in this version - microsite handling, filtering of report data, and GUI improvements to mention some.

The summer has been a busy one for Greytower - we've rebuilt our internal test systems, and wandered the Web searching for real-life cases of the type which our various baselines look for. This, combined with minor, but significant, changes to the graphical user interface of the reports makes this version of siteSifter the most precise and usable ever. Have a look at our siteSifter Lite at http://www.sitesifter.co.uk/lite/ and then come talk to us about a subscription!

Under some rare circumstances the markup validation parser for WCAG 2.0 used the incorrect character set, and thereby produced false positives. Release 2.9p41 fixes this bug, and adds a number of improvements to both WCAG 1.0 and 2.0 parsers, including a beta version of a more advanced contrast ratio analysis algorithm.

The 2.9p42 release of siteSifter focus mainly on improvements to the back-end systems in order to increase application speed and improve internal error reporting. This'll make it easier for us to provide our clients with quick, and precise assistance. In addition to this we have made several improvements to the user interface, both to make it more efficient and more consistent. It is our opinion that we've succeeded in both of those goals.

For the 7^th year in a row, the UK's Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has entrusted Greytower and siteSifter with the automated part of this year's SOCITM Better Connected audit (BC10).

During this project - designed to assist local government in making good content accessible to all - a total of 433 sites were to be automatically tested against a SOCITM-specific baseline, and the results collated to form the basis for manual review.

Greytower's siteSifter testing tool went through approximately two hundred pages from each site - 86,600 pages in all - in a little less than thirty six hours, and delivered over sixteen megabytes worth of custom reports.

We here at Greytower would like to thank the RNIB for their continued trust in us, and wish them a successful continuation of the project!

About Greytower

Greytower Technologies is a Swedish-based company with a UK presence, specialising in system development and automated quality auditing on and for the World Wide Web. We perform single and multiple site audits using a number of different tests suites, including accessibility guidelines.

Greytower has been registered with the Swedish Tax Office since 2002.

siteSifter and siteSifter Journal are © 2002-2009 Greytower Technologies; all rights reserved.

For more information, please contact:
Tina Holmboe
CTO, Greytower Technologies
info@greytower.net

About RNIB

Every day another 100 people will start to lose their sight. There are around two million people in the UK with sight problems. RNIB is the leading charity working in the UK offering practical support, advice and information for anyone with sight difficulties. If you, or someone you know, has a sight problem, RNIB can help. Call the RNIB Helpline on 0303 123 9999 or visit www.rnib.org.uk.

For more information, please contact:
Marco Ranon
RNIB Access Consultancy Services
webaccess@rnib.org.uk

About SOCITM

SOCITM, funded in 1986 as the professional association for ICT managers working in and for the public sector, is today a membership organisation running professional and commercial activities. With around 1700 members, including 98% of all UK local authorities, it plays a leading role in ICT-facilitated local government transformation in the UK.

While 2009 draws to a close, Greytower is still hard at work with bugfixes and features for siteSifter.

Today we announce release 2.9p43, or, in other words, the 43^rd patch of version 2.9. Among the notable changes and improvements are enhanced support for JavaScript and user interface polishing.

About Greytower

Greytower Technologies is a Swedish-based company with a UK presence, specialising in system development and automated quality auditing on and for the World Wide Web. We perform single and multiple site audits using a number of different tests suites, including accessibility guidelines.

Greytower has been registered with the Swedish Tax Office since 2002.

siteSifter and siteSifter Journal are © 2002-2009 Greytower Technologies; all rights reserved.

For more information, please contact:
Tina Holmboe
CTO, Greytower Technologies
info@greytower.net

Greytower Staff does not rest on our laurels; by no means. We are busy working on new and improved features. Today, however, we do some maintenance.

Release 2.9p45 of siteSifter focus mainly on improvements to the project editor, including new and more accessibly ways of notifying the user of input field validation errors, and on improvements to the overall accessibility of the interface.

About Greytower

Greytower Technologies is a Swedish-based company with a UK presence, specialising in system development and automated quality auditing on and for the World Wide Web. We perform single and multiple site audits using a number of different tests suites, including accessibility guidelines.

Greytower has been registered with the Swedish Tax Office since 2002.

siteSifter and siteSifter Journal are © 2002-2009 Greytower Technologies; all rights reserved.

For more information, please contact:
Tina Holmboe
CTO, Greytower Technologies
info@greytower.net

One of the features in siteSifter which we are the most proud of is the ability to present reports in a multitude of formats. We aim to have a number of generic, and specialized, formats available.

Release 2.9p46 of siteSifter is part of this work, and add generic reports in the ODF (Open Document Format), PDF (Portable Document Format) and ODC (Microsoft Word®) formats.

About Greytower

Greytower Technologies is a Swedish-based company with a UK presence, specialising in system development and automated quality auditing on and for the World Wide Web. We perform single and multiple site audits using a number of different tests suites, including accessibility guidelines.

Greytower has been registered with the Swedish Tax Office since 2002.

siteSifter and siteSifter Journal are © 2002-2009 Greytower Technologies; all rights reserved.

For more information, please contact:
Tina Holmboe
CTO, Greytower Technologies
info@greytower.net

Formalised standards and guidelines are all well and good, but at times you want a simple, straight-forward, test of good practises when authoring for the web.

This is what our Analytics baseline is for, and while it has always been useful, we've spent time making it even more so. As part of this work we've talked to developers and designers, and nailed down a number of new checkpoints to include.

With a full eighteen different tests, we are confident that you'll find something useful. Due to the nature of the Analytics baseline we are also interested in your views on Best Practise, and what we can do to support it.

We would also like to mention that as of last week it is possible to follow us on Twitter as @GreytowerTech - welcome!

About Greytower

Greytower Technologies is a Swedish-based company with a UK presence, specialising in system development and automated quality auditing on and for the World Wide Web. We perform single and multiple site audits using a number of different tests suites, including accessibility guidelines.

Greytower has been registered with the Swedish Tax Office since 2002.

siteSifter and siteSifter Journal are © 2002-2009 Greytower Technologies; all rights reserved.

For more information, please contact:
Tina Holmboe
CTO, Greytower Technologies
info@greytower.net

Revision 2.9p48 of siteSifter is primarily a maintenance release, aimed at correcting a number of minor bugs. Some changes have been made to the syntax highlight mechanism in the reports so as to make identifying problematic code easier.

Two new features was added - direct links to mirrors, datasets and reports from the status page, and a brief quota display in the upper menubar (expert mode only) for a quick overview of how many projects/pages can still be created/processed.

About Greytower

Greytower Technologies is a Swedish-based company with a UK presence, specialising in system development and automated quality auditing on and for the World Wide Web. We perform single and multiple site audits using a number of different tests suites, including accessibility guidelines.

Greytower has been registered with the Swedish Tax Office since 2002.

siteSifter and siteSifter Journal are © 2002-2009 Greytower Technologies; all rights reserved.

For more information, please contact:
Tina Holmboe
CTO, Greytower Technologies
info@greytower.net