Developers often live in a laboratory. In the laboratory, everyone has the proper equipment, fast machines, and an even faster connection. The user never disconnects unexpectedly and always knows how to get the most out of their computer. The problem with the lab is that it doesn't model the real world. In the real world, users get bored, try odd key combinations just to see what they do, don't understand their computer very well, but do know how to complain about the smallest application problems. If you want to avoid problems with the application you develop, you need to create a development environment that models the real world.
It's also easy to get lost in the development environment setup. Make sure you understand the person who uses your application. For example, it's quite possible that only desktop users will have any interest in your site on desktop machine maintenance, but you need to determine that fact in some way (online surveys work well). You also don't want to spend a lot of time testing the application to meet the needs of users who have no use for your product. Again, surveys and newsgroup polls are helpful in determining the real world environment that you must emulate with your system.
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