Cloud Four Blog
Responsive Web Design Guidelines and Tutorials
Responsive Nav — Responsive Navigation Plugin
Learning to Love the Boring Bits of CSS
The future of CSS gives us much to be excited about: On the one hand, there’s a whole range of new methods that are going to revolutionize the way we lay out pages on the web; on the other, there’s a new set of graphical effects that will allow on-the-fly filters and shaders. People love this stuff. Magazines and blogs are full of articles about them. Issue № 358 But if these tools are the show ponies of CSS, then I think it’s time we gave some love to the carthorses: the nuts-and-bolts components of the language, like selectors, units, and functions. To see why, let’s take a quick walk through some of the best of the new boring bits in CSS—the bits being worked on in half-lit laboratories away from the brilliance of the shiny new things in the shop windows. Relative size units#section1 This is fine, and not a problem at all, until you have a child element you want to set at a different font size. The cat sat on the <span>mat</span>. And the problem’s not limited to using em either.
The Infinite Grid
Grid systems are a key component of graphic design, but they’ve always been designed for canvases with fixed dimensions. Until now. Today we’re designing for a medium that has no fixed dimensions, a medium that can and will shape-shift to better suit its environment—a medium capable of displaying a single layout on a smartphone, a billboard in Times Square, and everything in between. We’re designing for an infinite canvas—and for that, we need an infinite grid system. It’s common to think of responsive design as multiple layouts: mobile, tablet, desktop, etc. The problem is the “in-between” sizes tend to suffer, so we end up with layouts that look great at specific dimensions (320, 720, 960), but less than great for everything else. As the spectrum of device resolutions gets wider and smoother, focusing all our attention on “key dimensions” for each page is going to result in a subpar experience for more and more users. What is an infinite grid system? States#section2 Components#section3
Responsive Web Design
The English architect Christopher Wren once quipped that his chosen field “aims for Eternity,” and there’s something appealing about that formula: Unlike the web, which often feels like aiming for next week, architecture is a discipline very much defined by its permanence. Article Continues Below A building’s foundation defines its footprint, which defines its frame, which shapes the facade. Each phase of the architectural process is more immutable, more unchanging than the last. Working on the web, however, is a wholly different matter. But the landscape is shifting, perhaps more quickly than we might like. In recent years, I’ve been meeting with more companies that request “an iPhone website” as part of their project. A flexible foundation#section1 Let’s consider an example design. But no design, fixed or fluid, scales seamlessly beyond the context for which it was originally intended. Becoming responsive#section2 Recently, an emergent discipline called “ responsive architecture .
Device-Agnostic Approach To Responsive Web Design
Advertisement This is a different take on Responsive Web design. This article discusses how we can better embrace what the Web is about by ignoring the big elephant in the room; that is, how we can rely on media queries and breakpoints without any concern for devices. The Challenge Let’s start our journey by looking at these online tools: Those pages let people check websites through a set of pre-built views based on various device sizes or orientations. Now check the-great-tablet-flood of 20116. Do you get my drift? I don’t want to go the "consider it to be harmful7" route, but I want to point out that tools like these, or articles promoting a device approach (i.e. To me, it seems more realistic to check our layouts through viewports of arbitrary dimensions and shapes. The Goal The goal is to surface content, to style boxes as columns so they bring sections above the fold. Content Is King! The Principle The content of a box dictates its width. Decisions are made keeping these points in mind:
Responsive Web Design: What It Is and How To Use It
Advertisement Almost every new client these days wants a mobile version of their website. It’s practically essential after all: one design for the BlackBerry, another for the iPhone, the iPad, netbook, Kindle — and all screen resolutions must be compatible, too. In the next five years, we’ll likely need to design for a number of additional inventions. When will the madness stop? In the field of Web design and development, we’re quickly getting to the point of being unable to keep up with the endless new resolutions and devices. Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. The Concept Of Responsive Web Design Ethan Marcotte1 wrote an introductory article about the approach, “Responsive Web Design992,” for A List Apart. Transplant this discipline onto Web design, and we have a similar yet whole new idea. Adjusting Screen Resolution Flexible Images (al) (vf)
