A Review of Xenu's Link Sleuth
Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM) is a powerful spidering tool that checks Web pages for broken hyperlinks. It can be used to find broken hyperlinks in HTML, CGI, Perl, JavaScript and much more. Link checking is done on text/html links, frames, pictures, hyperlinks, plug ins, stylesheets, scripts and local image maps. A variety of different parameters allow the user to search through pages, either by finding specific keywords or based on meta tags.
This tool finds broken hyperlinks in all these areas and provides details of where the link was found. Some of the common problems it finds are: broken hyperlinks, missing closing tags, missing file name, missing parenthetical text, incorrect filename, missing info, out-of-area links, out-of-date information, incorrect format data, invalid flags, empty URL, cookies without cookies, invalid session, security bypass vulnerability, unknown error, and many more. Some resources that are used in Xenu's Link Sleuth are: Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), HTML, XML, compiled JavaScript, and Java. Many other resources are available to assist users with this software as well. Some of the features are customizable and include: sorting, duplicate records, and grouping. The software has an extensive documentation facility that explains how to use it and what options are available.
Xenu's Link Sleuth is ideal for users who have completed site analysis and verification, or for those who know very little about how to verify web sites. For novices and other inexperienced users, this is a great way to find broken links and missing links without having to go through the process of link checking by hand. Users can also save a lot of time by having this program do the linking for them. Overall, this is a great tool for any web site owner or web site manager who needs to perform automatic link checks and other tasks.
