Just finished reading an excellent book: “Responsive Web Design” by Ethan Marcotte. If you build web pages, I want you to read this book. Here’s a few of my thoughts on what I just learned, and why you should read this one too.
The book begins with an overview of the evolution of page layout in web design, starting with it’s roots in printed page design and moving on to today’s reality that there is a multitude of screens and devices out there, with more on the way. We cannot predict what type of device our readers will show up with, and must adjust our belief system (if we have one) to accommodate the new realities that the various screen widths and mobile device sizes present us with.
The second chapter discusses the idea of designing within the constraints of a flexible typographic grid. Grid systems are somewhat of an artificial constraint that designers place on themselves to provide balance and symmetry to page layout, and on screen a new challenge is presented in that the page size is no longer fixed. The main takeaway here is to design content in flexible porportions to the variable screen widths that might be used to access your web pages. Mr. Marcotte puts forth some simple, accessible ideas for developers to leverage, making text more readable on unknown devices by putting forth a formula that I’ll repeat here mostly for the purposes of getting my own head wrapped around it:
target ÷ context = result
To decode Mr. Marcotte’s example, he begins with an assumption of a base font size of 16px. The headline in the comp is defined to be 24px. So to make it flexible, divide:
24 ÷ 16 = 1.5
And so the headline should be defined as 1.5em. Simple and elegant rule of thumb. Now we just need to remember to do it.
Chapter 3 applies this principle to flexible images, and expands upon it. There is the inevitable Questionable Functionality Challenge™ presented to us by Internet Explorer, which is quickly defused. That’s a lot of ink to dedicate to an obsolete web browser and the example demonstrates where the real problem lies by showing how awful text looks in resized images. But you aren’t locking up text in your images, right? I know, I know, it’s an academic example and clearly illustrates the failings of IE’s image resize capabilities. Let’s move on.
Chapter 4 introduces media queries. We’re finally at what I consider to be the coolest and most important part of the book – how to progressively enhance your web page layouts through the media query construct. Mr. Marcotte makes the argument in favor of using the min-width property instead of things like max-width (which tends to yield excessive code) and min-device-width (which only pertains to devices and doesn’t take into account variable web browser windows.) The max-width property is introduced for those that want to stop the insanity. (I do know people that expand their web browser to the full width of their 27″ high resolution monitors.)
Chapter 5 pulls it all together with strategies to integrate responsive design into your team’s workflow; how to make your design process itself a responsive one. He builds the case for Luke Wroblewski‘s “Mobile First” philosophy (a case that was already built up a bit in chapter 1) and finishes it all of with how to incorporate progressive enhancement using JavaScript to selectively pull in a slideshow component only when JavaScript is available and all the stars are in the proper alignment.
Overall, my belief has always been somewhat of the philosophy that there should be just “one web”; no “mobile web” or any other sort of alternate web reality that we should somehow slip into. Today’s mobile devices that are in fact being used to access the web are billed as fully capable web browsing devices, and indeed they are. Why deliver a shrunken-down version of your website just because they have a 3″ wide screen these days? It no longer makes sense in most cases; just reposition your content to accommodate their view. Every chapter includes simple, usable techniques that work, and I feel that these gems of advice should be a core part your future projects.
Lastly, I am very thankful for the appearance of the A Book Apart series. Each one of these volumes is, I believe, how a tech book should be: concise, full of valuable, practical, actionable information. I have read several of these so far, and each one has been a hit. I look forward to more.
