Design for Speed—Some Random Dude.
I’ll be the first one to admit that I haven’t been able to really sweat the details when it came to the network side of the front end. It’s all too easy on our fat broadband connections to use that extra jQuery plugin (and jQuery itself) or nudge up the quality on that image because even though no one else can see it, we know the artifacts are there.
Beyond that though, when working in client work it often comes down to hours and dollars, which don’t result in the best environment to prune off those couple of HTTP requests or those couple dozen bytes. Additionally, using jQuery and those couple of plugins might just save you 20 hours of work. These factors are all super important, but do they outweigh compromising the integrity of your work? I’ve been thinking about that lately, and without getting too rhetorical; front end optimization will be my focus from here on out, starting with my own projects and working my way to efficiently applying techniques to client sites.
I’m outgrowing my “get off my lawn” approach to the latest and greatest stuff in CSS3 and recognizing that the implementations can truly have a great effect here in a number of ways when you’re primarily focused on performance and speed. Food for thought.
PJ says a number of things I fully stand behind, we need to continue striving for equilibrium in this wacky medium of ours.