Upgrade to Pro — share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …

Responsive Web Design - The Past, Present, and Future

Lewis Nyman
March 23, 2012

Responsive Web Design - The Past, Present, and Future

This presentation examines the philosophy of "Responsive Web Design". It's suitable for newcomers to the term and experienced developers and designers who are already deeply involved in creating responsive sites.

Past

The web was stuck inside a lie we had created for ourselves called 960px. Designing sites for the lowest common denomination of screen size. Screens were getting bigger and more varied and we didn’t take advantage of them because it was hard.

Mobile web browsing came of age. Screen sizes suddenly got a lot smaller and forced us to stop looking at the web through the 960px view port and start thinking about how users were experiencing our site on different devices.

Present

Ethan Marcotte introduced a philosophy called 'Responsive Web Design'. It embraces the fact that devices are different and adapts to different contexts. Let's explore the roots of the philosophy and how it gave meaning to techniques people were already using.

Since the introduction of the term the web community has embraced it and expanded upon the original concepts. Mobile first responsive design is progressive enhancement taken a step further. Conditional loading introduces the concept of economical enhancement. Don't load what won't be used.

Future

There’s a lot more to a mobile device than a small screen. If a larger screen size is considered a device capability then what other capabilities do devices have we can take advantage of to create a better experience.

Lewis Nyman

March 23, 2012
Tweet

More Decks by Lewis Nyman

Other Decks in Design

Transcript

  1. “We’re designing for mice and keyboards, for T9 keypads, for

    handheld game controllers, for touch interfaces. In short, we’re faced with a greater number of devices, input modes, and browsers than ever before.” Tuesday, 20 March 12
  2. W3C Working Draft Published 2001 HTML4 foresees need for @media

    query 1998 Opera Implements 2003 Tuesday, 20 March 12
  3. W3C Working Draft Published 2001 Opera Implements 2003 Safari Implements

    2008 Firefox Implements 2009 Tuesday, 20 March 12
  4. Chrome and IE Implements 2010 W3C Working Draft Published 2001

    Opera Implements 2003 Safari Implements 2008 Firefox Implements 2009 Tuesday, 20 March 12
  5. What did you think? Locate this session on the DrupalCon

    Denver website http://denver2012.drupal.org/program Click the “Take the Survey” link. Thank You! Tuesday, 20 March 12