Responsive Design 2015
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- mg33
I'm interested in some of you who work on responsive web projects with clients to share some thoughts on the process. Though I'm not very involved in any responsive projects, many of my team members are, and I tend to see them experience some headaches trying to get clients aligned with it.
One of the things I've seen often is that responsive design is emphasized as the actual transition between screen sizes. They will get very deep into physically changing the size of a browser window to show people how sections of the page scale to fit their destined viewport. IMO, this is not what responsive design is. If you're on a mobile phone, you are not going to experience those transitions, nor will you on a computer's browser, or a tablet. You're going to see the view that was meant for that specific device.
Have any of you experienced that? Where people get really wrapped up in those transitions?
What are you doing to make the process either for the clients you work with? What do you find them getting hung up on or confused the most?
- set0
It's just an easier more efficient way of showing how the website works, as opposed to getting a desktop, a tablet and a phone and loading the site up on all three.... I don't understand the problem?
- this exactly - its nothing to do with the transitions - thats just an easy way of demoing itfadein11
- ukit20
Are you talking about animating the transition between the different breakpoints? I agree that's a somewhat frivolous aspect, since mobile users won't see the transition anyway. Some sites do it nicely though.
- set0
In terms of making the process easier we prototype the responsive layout first, before design, and explain the breakpoints and restrictions of a responsive and website... This helps, at least to some degree, avoid stupid and unachievable requests at the design stage.
Designing from mobile upwards definitely has it merits starting with the essentials and working upwards as opposed to starting with all the bells and whistles and taking things away.
- mg330
set,
But I see people demonstrate a responsive site by frequently focusing on the actual transition - as if they're designing the transitions and emphasizing that the transitions are the outcome of going responsive.
- ernexbcn0
You don't need to animate between transitions, only a tiny percentage of your visitors will actually see that.
But do use proper media queries, not JS bullshit to detect the viewport size. Only a few exceptions require JS but most of the layout should work under media queries breakpoints.
- ernexbcn0
^ some sites do server side client detection to display a "mobile" version which is entirely different than the desktop site, that decision depends on the type of site you are working on of course. I prefer everything on the client through CSS and feature detection through JS (Modernizr or similar).
- fadein110
You are they are getting hung up on a trivial issue here - the transitions really are not that important - bells and whistles.
Any client with half a brain would realise that 99.9% of users will only see the different viewports isolated and not move between different sizes.
- monNom0
However, having a website that works at any screen size - ie: current sizes and future sizes - is important. So looking good between hard breakpoints is important.
- omahadesigns0
Having a site that works at all browser sizes is a good idea. Transitions demonstrate that this works.