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Responsive Web Design: Review
Up until I read Ethan’s new book, Responsive Web Design, I wasn’t very excited about the concept at all. I liked the idea behind it, but the way people were talking about RWD(Responsive web design) made it seem like child’s play.
“While y?all are off resizing your browsers and tweeting about your oohs and aahs, I?ll be making real websites”, I?d chuckle to myself from the toilet seat. Laptop in hand.
Yesterday though, my mind was changed completely and this is something I’m genuinely excited about. It’s the first thing web-related thats really got me going since I “made” my first site in Dreamweaver. It’s why I slept 4 hours last night. I’ve completely jumped on board and I’m having a boat party, y’all.
This doesn’t mean all the projects we build should be responsive, but the foundation can be laid by developing our websites more logically, with flexible fonts and layout baked in.
I believe there’s still quite a way to go on the best way to implement RWD (responsive web design), and there’s hundreds of use-cases we probably haven?t even uncovered yet— but that’s what I?m most excited about.
Published: by Erskine Design
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6 Comments
I went through the same thing: For a long time I just thought Responsive Web Design was a fancy way of packaging up some media queries and BS, but once I read more about it I realized that there’s really a lot to think about here. It’s a totally different approach to designing websites, and I think it’s a very strong solution to the regular-site-plus-mobile-site problem.
This idea can really be stretched (ha) in a few more directions. I wrote an article about this on Think Vitamin a few weeks ago where I probably more eloquently expressed my thinking: http://thinkvitamin.com/design/user-interface/the-untapped-potential-of-responsive-web-design/
I was probably the same until hearing all the DIBI speakers yesterday and I think it’s probably given me more confidence to just do it.
I’ve only just started Ethan’s book. A client called me on Tues asking for an iPhone app (which I don’t do) for their ecommerce store and explained an app is a barrier to conversion from their standpoint, whereas a website that was responsive would work across devices and it makes more sense.
Nick: Couldn’t agree w/ you more. And great article btw, that’s the kind of use-cases I’m talking about that I’m excited to see start popping up.
Stephen: Thanks for the comment. It’s wonderful for ecommerce, most news as well – but for other types of sites I think we still need to find the right way of giving the end user the option of full or mobile.
This is defiantly a subject that I will need to research and learn more about.
As a junior web designer at creare communications my knowledge is a little limited but I have read numerous blogs and this is a subject that has cropped up a lot and seems to be something that may become standard very soon and something that everyone will be doing.
Absolutely. Prime example being the site I’m working on just now. The navigation I have really wouldn’t fit or look that great and so I think it needs a specifically targeted approach. I love what you guys have done with the mobile site and also Ngenworks. It’s mobile but not illegible on the desktop either.
Like you, like the others, I had read about RWD but hadn’t really thought about it too much. Collys site was inspirational but a bit out there and I couldn’t really see how to implement the ideas into my projects. Then someone pointed me to a responsive grid system – http://www.getskeleton.com/ – and I rebuilt my personal site using it. It was very good and did the job but then through the post came Ethan’s new book and I now need to start again! Like Zeldmans designing with Webstandards I think Ethan’s book is a tipping point. Both gathered all the available information and put it together in a way that we could understand and relate to and from that the picture became clear. Very exciting times!