Approaches to Responsive Design & Development

Approaches to Responsive Design & DevelopmentJanuary 21, 2013

What is Responsive Design?• An approach to web design in

which a site is crafted to provide an optimal viewing experience – easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling – across a wide range of devices (Wikipedia)

• Ethan Marcotte, A List Apart, Responsive Web Design (May 25, 2010)

• No longer a ‘luxury’

Elements of Responsive Design• Fluid Grids & Fluid Layouts• Media Queries • Flexible Images/Media

• Responsive Menus• Flexible type

Fluid Layouts• Benefits vs. fixed-width layout; drawbacks• Target / Context = Result

Fixed-Width (based on pixels) Fluid Layout (based on %’s)

Fluid Grids• Typically 12 or 16 columns with column width and gutters

based on %’s• Example:

Using Fluid Grids• 1140gs – cssgrid.net (PSD template included)• Foundation by Zurb (framework)• Twitter Bootstrap (framework)• Use 12/16 column PSD template when creating mockup

Media Queries• Placed in stylesheet (can also use Javascript detection)• Looks at the capability of the device and checks for:• Width & Height of browser window• Orientation• Resolution

• http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/media-queries-for-standard-devices/

• http://nmsdvid.com/snippets/

Media Query Example

@media only screen and (min-device-width : 320px) and (max-device-width : 480px) {

#primary-nav {display:none;}#responsive-nav {display:block;}

}

• Example: RoomTemp• Concept of ‘breakpoints’

Media Query Breakpoints• Browser widths that have a media query declaration to change

the layout once the browser is within the declared range• 320 px — Mobile portrait• 480 px — Mobile landscape• 600 px — Small tablet• 768 px — Tablet portrait• 1024 px — Tablet landscape/Netbook• 1280 px & greater — Desktop

Flexible Images & Media

img, embed, iframe {Max-width:100%;Height:auto;}• http://css-tricks.com/video-source-by-screen-size/ -

Different videos depending on screen size and device• http://retinajs.com/ - Retina Images

Responsive Menus• Full Horizontal• Select Box (ex. RoomTemp)• Custom Dropdown (ex. Daystar)• Off Canvas

• http://css-tricks.com/responsive-menu-concepts/

Flexible Typography• Set body to font-size:100% / 1em (16px)• Base all fonts relative to the base font size, so a 32px H1 would

be 2em (32 / 16 = 2)• This makes it easy to adjust all typography with a single media

query, changing the body font-size up or down• PxtoEm.com• CSS3 rems (based off HTML element, no nesting)

Responsive Frameworks• Based around a fluid grid (except Skeleton); some contain user

interface elements and additional features• Skeleton • Twitter Bootstrap• Zurb Foundation • 1140 CSS Grid

Advantages of Frameworks• Basic media queries & responsiveness done for you• Cross-browser tested• Rapid protoyping; grid template provided for designing• Drawbacks: learning curve, lots of markup, can be tough to

create highly custom designs

Helpful Plugins• CSS3-Mediaqueries.js (support for media queries on IE8 and

below)• Retina.js (serve up high res images)• Fittext.js (scalable headlines)• FlexSlider (responsive slider)• FitVids.js (fluid video embeds)

Hacking Responsive Wordpress Themes

• Inspect the behavior of the site• Look at the media queries• Determine if they are using a framework…learn how to

incorporate that• Example: Teamate.us