CategoryResponsive Design

May 2, 2013 — A lightbox is one of those tools that work great on the desktop but often fail on small mobile devices. These days, finding a plugin that is responsive and that displays content right away is hard. For this reason, I created Magnific Popup, an open-source lightbox plugin focused on performance. Read more…

April 25, 2013 — One of the issues we need to be concerned with in responsive design is how to maintain hierarchy as elements on the screen are resized and reflowed. Trent Walton first called attention to the issue with his post “Content Choreography,” which showed how visual hierarchy gets lost when columns are dropped below one another. Read more…

April 9, 2013 — In many ways, responsive Web design deserves a big share of the honor for making the Web more usable on non-desktop devices. This trend of letting the browser determine more about how a Web page should be displayed makes sense, especially now that mobile browsers are slightly more trustworthy than in the old days of mobile. Read more…

April 3, 2013 — A recent study (PDF) found that more than 80% of people are disappointed with the experience of browsing Web on mobile devices and would use their smartphones more if the browsing experience improved. Read more…

March 21, 2013 — This post should be titled “Getting Ahead of Yourself.” “…By a Few Years,” actually. Here’s the deal: at the time I’m writing this, early 2013, there’s no way to accurately design for the Web using physical units, nor will there be for a very long time. But there is a way to design while knowing the physical characteristics of the device — or, at least, there will be in the very near future. Read more…

March 18, 2013 — Since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, touchscreen mobile devices have exploded in popularity. They have introduced new problems, new solutions, new interactions, new ways of thinking and, of course, new costs to our clients. Read more…

March 11, 2013 — Responsive Web design has been evolving rapidly ever since Ethan Marcotte coined the term two years ago. Since then, techniques have emerged, become best practices and formed part of our ever-changing methodology. Read more…

March 5, 2013 — Earlier this year, I was in the beginning stages of a redesign for our company’s website. We had already been planning to use a straightforward responsive approach to Web design, which is our preferred solution for multi-device support. Read more…

March 2, 2013 — There are several tactics for deciding where to put breakpoints in a responsive design. There is the rusty idea that they should be based on common screen sizes, but this doesn’t scale well. There are no “common” screen sizes. Another popular tactic is to create a breakpoint wherever the layout breaks. Read more…

February 14, 2013 — When considering a mobile Web strategy and weighing responsive Web design against a separate mobile website, the most important metric is how functional the website is for the user. This goes beyond better content organization for smaller screens. Read more…