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

[Steven Champeon <schampeo AT hesketh.com>]

on Wed, Oct 24, 2001 at 01:54:32PM -0400, Paul Cory wrote:
> > 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.

Yup. Strongly agree.

> Getting Web Designers to do that is another thing all together.

I don't know about this. I think most Web designers test their sites.
Whether they also test them over a variety of connection speeds is
another question, of course, but most of the pros at least solicit
feedback from those with different connection speeds, based on the
feedback requests I see on my list.

> 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);

Think "ad supported, free online service" ;)

> 2) Platform availability (if it's not available for my development 
> platform, that's a big strike against);

See above :)

> 3) Ease-of-use (Time is valuable - if it's too much hassle, I won't use 
> it).

I'd suggest that anything more complex than:

 1) enter a URL
 2) choose a speed

is probably too much.

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