20 Best Responsive Web Design Examples of 2012 The Boston Globe The largest responsive website to date, The Boston Globe handles loads of content effortlessly, keeping the site intuitive and the content easily accessible on the device of your choice. Smashing Magazine I love this site. I really do. Smashing takes advantage of horizontal screen real estate like few responsive sites do. Food Sense Clean layout, beautiful photography and playful iconography made me like this site immediately on my first visit. Andersson Wise Type designer, Jan Tschichold once said, ‘Simplicity of form is never a poverty, it is a great virtue.’ Sphero If you haven’t check out Sphero, you should. CSS Tricks It might be the conspicuous green frog that causes me love this site. Grey Goose The Grey Goose site shows that designing responsively does not limit our designs to columns of fluid text and images on solid backgrounds. New Adventures In Web Design Lancaster University Fundraise.com Web Designer Wall Heathlife London & Partners Oliver Russell Ryan O’Rourke Fork
85 Top Responsive Web Design Tools As the mobile market continues to grow, demand for responsive website design intensifies. This has introduced a new set of tools, 10 of which we've listed below, to help lay out, design, code and plan a responsive website. While some may overlap, each deserves a spot on the list; when combined, they can help you craft a website that provides an optimal viewing experience for users on all devices. (Along with each recommendation is a list of alternative tools that may be useful.) If you are a designer or developer, what are some of the indispensable tools in your responsive toolbox? 1. Developed first as an internal tool that has now grown into a full-fledged product, Gridset lets web designers and developers design, prototype and build custom, responsive grid-based layouts for their projects. The beauty of Gridset is how fast it will allow you to build responsive prototypes (without all the calculations), providing all the measurements and tools to integrate with your existing markup.
Building a Responsive, Future-Friendly Web for Everyone This week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has seen the arrival of dozens of new devices from tablets to televisions. Some of these newfangled gadgets will soon be in the hands of consumers who will use them to access your website. Will your site work? Or will it end up mangled by a subpar web browser, odd screen size or slow network connection? No one wants to rewrite their website every time a new device or browser hits the web. Even if you aren’t a gadget lover, CES should help drive home the fundamental truth of today’s web — devices, they are a comin’. Basics: Further Reading: Future Friendly — An overview of how some of the smartest people in web design are thinking about the ever-broadening reach of the web: “We can’t be all things on all devices. Techniques:
Essential tools for every web designer Every web designer requires the right tools to do their job. To create well crafted original designs you certainly need to be inspired to do so. Getting to that point is sometimes the hardest challenge in the field of web design. Luckily enough for us and our fellow design community there are tools available to assist in completing the job quicker and more efficiently. Below, I have outlined a list of tools I recommend for any web designer. Color Adobe Kuler (free) A great tool offered by Adobe which allows members to upload, create, and edit color schemes of their choice. Pictaculous (free) From the creators of Mailchimp comes a color palette generator different to any other. Colorzilla (free) ColorZilla for Google Chrome is an extension that assists web developers and graphic designers with color related tasks – both basic and advanced.ColorZilla includes a Color Picker, Eye Dropper, Gradient Generator and many additional advanced color tools. Dribbble.com (free) Hues ($2.99) Typography
A Responsive Web Design Tutorial for Beginners This is the second post in a series about Responsive Web Design, described in plain language from a front end designer. In our last post I wrote about three reasons responsive web design is something you should know about. We discussed the problems associated with the traditional method of designing a desktop and mobile version of a website. Essentially, there are just too many mobile devices hitting the market to tailor our websites to view well on them all. The thing I like about problems or challenges is that–if we let them–they make us better people and create space for innovation and solutions that may otherwise never be discovered. Designer and developer Ethan Marcotte was instrumental in solving this problem of device compatibility. In actuality, the problem is still being solved and responsive web design methods, tools and standards are still being developed and refined. Media Queries Responsive design uses a CSS3 feature called media queries. Break Points The Fluid Grid
Multi-Device Layout Patterns Through fluid grids and media query adjustments, responsive design enables Web page layouts to adapt to a variety of screen sizes. As more designers embrace this technique, we're not only seeing a lot of innovation but the emergence of clear patterns as well. I cataloged what seem to be the most popular of these patterns for adaptable multi-device layouts. To get a sense of emerging responsive design layout patterns, I combed through all the examples curated on the Media Queries gallery site several times. Mostly Fluid The most popular pattern was perhaps surprisingly simple: a multi-column layout that introduces larger margins on big screens, relies on fluid grids and images to scale from large screens down to small screen sizes, and stacks columns vertically in its narrowest incarnations (illustrated below). I dubbed this pattern "mostly fluid" because the core structure of the layout really doesn't change until the smallest screen width. Column Drop Layout Shifter Tiny Tweaks Off Canvas
Complex Navigation Patterns for Responsive Design The most frequently asked question I get since posting my responsive navigation patterns article is: How do I handle complex navigation for responsive designs?” Great question, but before we get down to brass tacks, I urge you: use mobile as an excuse to revisit your navigation. Look at your analytics. What are your experience’s key sections? Where are people spending most of their time? Do you really need your privacy policy in your primary navigation? Another thing: if you have a zillion sections and pages, prioritize search. OK, now that all that’s out of the way, time for some real talk. Sometimes you just have a complex navigation. The Multi-Toggle Barack Obama's Multi-Toggle Navigation from his redesigned campaign site The multi-toggle is basically just nested accordions. Quick tip: use one of two emerging icons: the plus sign (+) or downward caret (▼ ▼) to let users know there’s more content. Pros Cons Resources In the Wild The Ol’ Right-to-Left Sony's small screen navigation
Responsive Web Design Demystified Tutorial by Matt Doyle | Level: Intermediate | Published on 30 September 2011 Categories: What exactly is responsive design, and how do you create a responsive website? This tutorial explains the concepts, and walks you through the basic steps for creating a responsive website layout. Responsive web design is a hot topic these days, especially as websites need to adapt to the growing number of mobile devices with their relatively small screens. However, the whole topic can be somewhat bewildering at first glance. In this article, you get a gentle introduction to the world of responsive web design. Learn exactly what responsive design is, and why it's useful Look at the difference between the terms "responsive design" and "adaptive design" Take an existing fluid layout and convert it into a responsive layout that looks good on all screens, from mobile to widescreen desktop, and See how media queries and the viewport meta tag can help you build responsive layouts. Responsive or adaptive?