Faster is better

FamManLib — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:29:49 +0000

When it comes to the Internet, faster is better, just about always. I have been thinking a lot about this since reading a post about this issue in the Official Google Mobile Blog a few weeks ago. In that post the author wrote about how Google used analysis of their search logs to see the dramatic effect of improving search response time for mobile users. If things are slow, they lose users. If things are fast, users want to use their service more.This one simple reality has so many big implications for me and for library technology. In an environment in which I feel constantly unable to satisfy user demands, where there is so much work that needs to happen in order to create a good user experience, it behooves me to focus more on this one thing. Make things go faster for users. Faster = happier users.I have spent time thinking about how true this is in my own experience. I am a bit of a new technology gadfly, willing to try new things and jumping from one to the other. Take for instance my web browser habits. I have used just about every web browser there has ever been, and also just about every version or iteration of them there ever has been. Overall I am most satisfied with Firefox and that has been my main browser of choice for a very long time. But I have tried Flock, Opera, and of course Internet Explorer. I know that IE is my absolute least favorite. So, OK: Firefox is mostly my favorite, IE is my least favorite. Sounds simple. But it isn’t. I can’t stop myself from jumping around to try others or different iterations of all of the above. For example I have used all different kinds of browsers on my mobile devices, different ones on my home computers, and still others on my work laptop. I am not 100% satisfied for long with any of them. Why? Well, there are a variety of reasons but one constant issue I have is speed. I want lightning-fast response time. Period. No matter what. Any delay is frustrating.This is why I have always played around with Safari, both for Mac and Windows. The earlier iterations of Safari for Windows were just awful. But even so, it was lightning fast, faster than anything else I’ve ever tried. I hate that I can’t customize it like I can Firefox. But I’m at the point now where speed trumps “like to haves”. Last night after reading some good reviews of the latest version of Safari for Windows (3.1), I decided to once again take the plunge and try. I am really happy with it so far. It’s early days yet and perhaps my fickle heart will eventually tire of it. But it is stable, and lightning fast, and that really counts for a tremendous amount in my book.So…I do believe faster is better, even with some caveats. It’s like the time back in the late ’90s when I moved away from dial-up to cable Internet access. I have never looked back nor wanted anything else but the fastest connection. I can’t imagine going back.We who work in libraries, especially with technology, would do well to simply try to make things work faster for our users. I bet we’d have a lot more happy ones if we emphasized this aspect of our online services more.

Family Man Librarian » safari

Faster is better