The top 25 responsive web design tools | Web design Over the past few years we've seen an explosion of web-enabled devices with varying resolutions, capabilities, form factors, pixel densities, interaction methods and more. This onslaught of connected devices is just the beginning, and we're bound to see people accessing the web from a greater number of devices in the coming years. It's futile to create a dedicated web experience for every single device class out there, and the need to create a smart, flexible, adaptable web experiences is becoming more apparent every day. Just because responsive design is becoming necessary doesn't mean it's easy. Innovative tools These are formidable problems we're up against, but thankfully the web design community is up to the challenge. There's a lot to get excited about, but it can also be a huge task to keep track of the latest tips and tricks. 01. Mobile-first, Foundation closely follows a progressive enhancement strategy. 02. This is where Jetstrap comes in. 03. 04. 05. 06. 07. 08. 09. 10. 11.
Spacing Out on CSS Namespaces One of my favourite past times is opening up a random email from the CSS mailing list and going down a rabbit hole. On one rainy day, I found myself staring at the specifications for CSS Namespaces module. Namespaces As Wikipedia defines it, a namespace provides a list of uniquely identifiable elements and attributes in an XML document. Here is how you would define the namespace of an XHTML document: The URL in the code above is simply the name of that namespace and does not refer to an actual location online. CSS Namespaces In 2007, Bert Bos explained why CSS Namespaces were introduced: The Namespaces module is very small, very simple, and probably rarely needed, but just because it is simple, it doesn’t cost much to add it to CSS. For example, SVG shares some common elements (e.g. Usage Using it with HTML 5 HTML5 allows inline SVG and MathML, which means you can style HTML, inline SVG and MathML elements using the same stylesheet.
Re-designing busuu Design Principle Two: Pictures are better than words (and icons are better than pictures) Busuu teaches people to learn foreign languages — and it’s good at it; since I have been working here our user base has grown by just over 10 million. As a result of having such a large user base, we have to cater for multiple interface languages with dramatically varying text lengths. To get around this text-length problem we have made a huge effort to use icons as much as possible to support and (where possible) to replace text translations. Tip: Use SVGs Again — it seems easier to just do a sprite sheet for web, but having SVGs will save you heaps of time in the long run if you are redesigning your product and are susceptible to decisions changing around colour, size, etc. Design Principle Three: Less steps good, more steps bad Our users come to busuu to learn languages — so we have reduced the number of steps required before they can access a learning unit. Tip: Don’t get lost in product re-skins
50 fantastic tools for responsive web design | CSS3 As introduced/coined by Ethan Marcotte in both his article "Responsive Web Design" as well as his best-selling book, one needs three elements to make a site responsive: A flexible/fluid gridResponsive imagesMedia queries There are plenty of other great articles that cover motives, concepts, and techniques regarding responsive web design, so we'll keep the focus of this article on some top tools that will help you become responsibly responsive. Tools for starting out Before you start with building your site, it's best to sketch out how the elements on the page will adapt to fit the different browser sizes of the various devices that they will be viewed upon, and to avoid the disconnect that often comes from thinking primarily about the desktop design and the rest of the responsive iterations as an afterthought (see especially Stephanie (Sullivan) Rewis' comment). 01. 02. 03. 04. 05. Tools for a flexible/fluid grid 06. 07. 08. 09. 10. 11. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. slabText 23.
Selectors Level 3 Abstract Selectors are patterns that match against elements in a tree, and as such form one of several technologies that can be used to select nodes in an XML document. Selectors have been optimized for use with HTML and XML, and are designed to be usable in performance-critical code. CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language for describing the rendering of HTML and XML documents on screen, on paper, in speech, etc. CSS uses Selectors for binding style properties to elements in the document. This document describes the selectors that already exist in CSS1 [CSS1] and CSS2 [CSS21], and further introduces new selectors for CSS3 and other languages that may need them. Selectors define the following function: expression ∗ element → boolean That is, given an element and a selector, this specification defines whether that element matches the selector. Status of this document This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Table of Contents 1. 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 2. 3. .
Is Your Responsive Design Working? Google Analytics Will Tell You Advertisement Responsive web design has become the dominant method of developing and designing websites. It makes it easier to think “mobile first” and to create a website that is viewable on mobile devices. In the early days of responsive web design, creating breakpoints in CSS for particular screen sizes was common, like 320 pixels for iPhone and 768 pixels for iPad, and then we tested and monitored those devices. As responsive design has evolved, we now more often start with the content and then set breakpoints when the content “breaks.” This means that you might end up with quite a few content-centric breakpoints and no particular devices or form factors on which to test your website. However, we are just guessing that our designs will perform well with different device classes and form factors and across different interaction models. Content-centric breakpoints are definitely the way to go, but they also mean that monitoring your website to identify when it breaks is more important.
10 Best Responsive HTML5 Frameworks and Tools This is a review of 10 open source responsive HTML5 frameworks, boilerplates and tools for front-end web development (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). I’ve included tutorials and resources related to each of them, and a comparison table at the end. 1. Twitter Bootstrap Bootstrap is a popular, modern front-end/UI development framework. Bootstrap has a 12-grid responsive layout, 13 custom jQuery plugins for common UIs like carousels and modal windows, a Bootstrap customizer, and more. Bootstrap is well-documented, and this open source project has plenty of coverage in blogs and tutorial sites. Bootstrap Tutorials Bootstrap Tools and Resources 2. Foundation is another popular responsive front-end framework. It has rapid-prototyping capabilities, a responsive grid system and much more. Foundation is by ZURB, a company of product designers focused on providing web-based solutions. Foundation Tutorials Foundation Tools and Resources 3. Skeleton Tutorials Skeleton Tools and Resources 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Media Queries Home / CSS3 Previews / Media Queries CSS2 added support for the media="screen" way of defining which stylesheet to use for which representation of the data. CSS3 adds a new feature to this functionality, by adding media queries. Basically, this means you can change stylesheets based on for instance the width and height of the viewport. Below are two tests, for min-width and max-width, currently only functional (and thus green) in Safari 3, Opera, and Firefox 3.1 (Alpha). min-width 640px max-width 1100px The CSS which should color the two divs above is as follows: