Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Paul Cory <paulwcory AT yahoo.com>]

> 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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