By Tim Kadlec CHAPTER 4You could also opt for a full-blown Web debugging proxy tool, like
Charles^16 or Fiddler^17. Both are available for Mac OS X and Windows and
offer a wide range of additional features beyond network simulation.
fReQuenT Pain
I mentioned network simulation to an engineer at a company that takes
performance very seriously, and he joked that he might go back and force
his team to write code for the next week over a poor connection.
A full week is probably a little excessive, but consider making network
simulation part of your weekly, or even daily, process. For a couple of hours
one day a week, have everyone on your team use a simulated network con-
nection. It won’t take too long before everyone will become painfully aware
of any performance bottlenecks and start working to fix them.
Get Real
I’m not about to write a lengthy entreaty about how flawed designing web-
sites in software like Photoshop is. I think the more it gets discussed, the
more we realize that, as with any tool, Photoshop has things it does well
and things it does poorly. We’ll never fully get rid of image manipulation
software in the design process and, frankly, that shouldn’t be the goal. But
it’s important to consider what shortcomings it has so that our process can
take them into account.
One valid concern with spending too much time in Photoshop versus
the browser is you see a picture of a website under ideal situations and at
a specific, controlled size. This is frequently cited as a problem for respon-
sive design, but it is also a performance issue. As Brad Frost has said, “You
can’t mock up performance in Photoshop.”^18
16 http://www.charlesproxy.com/
17 http://fiddler2.com/
18 http://smashed.by/bf-tweet