NIST is pleased to announce that Release 1.0 of the WebMetrics Tool Suite is now available from the National Institute of Standards and Technology as free software at, http://www.nist.gov/webmetrics.

The WebMetrics project is focused on providing tools to help with rapid, remote, and automated usability testing and evaluation of web sites.

Please feel free to send out our url to others as appropriate and link to our web site. If you are using our tools, please contact us about participating in the collection of case study data to help validate our tools. We need your feedback! Please send your comments, bug reports, and questions to webmetrics@nist.gov.

Here is an informal description of these tools. All run on Unix, Windows NT, and Windows 95.

• The Web Static Analyizer Tool (WebSAT) checks the html of a Web page against numerous guidelines. The output from WebSAT identifies potential usability problems which should be investigated through further user testing. WebSAT can be executed from any web browser or downloaded to accommodate those behind firewalls.

• The Web Category Analysis Tool (WebCAT) helps the usability engineer quickly construct and conduct a simple category analysis across the web. WebCAT should be downloaded and installed on your web server for local storage of your result files. Examples of WebCAT are available on the web site.

• The Web Visual Instrumenter Program (WebVIP) helps the usability engineer rapidly instrument a web site for local or remote testing by employing visual instrumenting as well as automated techniques. WebVIP must be downloaded and installed on your web server before it can be run.