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  • From: Paul Cory <paulwcory AT yahoo.com>
  • To: "InterNetWorkers" <internetworkers AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Web Page Design Tool Concept
  • Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 13:54:32 -0400


The issue isn't how to do it, since its already implemented. The issue I
need feedback on, is a product aimed at helping web designers
measure and increase web site performance something only a half
dozen people in the world would want, or is this something many web
developers couldn't live without?

My two cents: this is something that Web Designers _shouldn't_ live without. Dreamweaver and BBedit can estimate page download times for you, but they cannot reproduce the experience of downloading the page and the user experienced delays caused by:

Rendering the page (complicated table layouts, css positioning, plug-in load time and so on),
Network/server latency in processing secondary file requests (images, and css files primarily), which impacts rendering the page.

All of the above can seriously impact the end-user's perception of how fast the site is. And since the perception of how fast the site is what's really important, Web designers should be testing for it.

Getting Web Designers to do that is another thing all together. I'd love to test pages for final perceived speed, but that takes time, something I have in short supply. My perception is that I can use the numbers that Dreamweaver/BBEdit provide and the end-product will be good enough. Good enough that the end-users won't complain, good enough to satisfy the client, good enough to get paid.

Until I perceive that the move from good enough (using size based download speed estimates) to right (user perceived speed testing) is going to benefit me adequately for the added time and expense, I'm not going to do it.

Obviously, there are some designers who have already made that decision, or else no one would be asking for the product. :-) Have enough designers made that decision to make the product worth releasing? I don't know. In my case, it would depend on the following factors:

1) Price (the cheaper the better);
2) Platform availability (if it's not available for my development platform, that's a big strike against);
3) Ease-of-use (Time is valuable - if it's too much hassle, I won't use it).


Paul





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