Responsive Design Patterns | Hacker News Reader

Responsive Design Patterns

lukew.com

190 pointssirwitti9 comments

I've done a lot of front end development work but I always wonder about how responsive design will work out. It's not that I think responsive design is no good, it's just that high end web design firms are obsessive about having everything on the page look exactly correct. With a fixed width design, it's possible to get pixel perfect results.

What happens when a $5000 design is stretched out and looks different? Of course it's possible to code things that way, but my question lies with whether or not the bosses of these design firms are going to look at it and say "That looks fine, lets deliver it", or "That looks ugly, lets fixed-width it and design a completely different version for tablet". After all, you can't control what resolution your client will view your work in, and when they are paying that much money you want it to display the "best" way (ie. the same way it looked in Photoshop).

It kind of seems that in the very short term, the money flowing around front end design will be stuck in the past (IE7 support, no responsive design, distrust of css3 fonts, etc.) while the web in general will be moving in another direction.

Generally the bosses of the design firm are fine with responsive design. Good responsive designs take more effort. More effort == more billable hours. You also have the chance to up-sell existing clients. It's a win-win all round if you have the skills to do it.

The current problem is persuading the client that a responsive design is worthwhile. I still regularly encounter folk who don't understand the number of folk looking at the web using mobiles - let alone the necessity to design something to work on a variety of displays and contexts.

This is getting easier as more people interact with the web with more devices. Once folk actually use two different kinds of device to look at stuff online selling responsive solutions becomes much simpler. When it gets to three or four it sells itself.

You can have a fixed-width responsive design - you just have to have a couple. See bufferapp.com and observe how it jumps between fixed width designs.

This is a really nice summary complete with loads of good examples - future article writers - if it isn't at least this standard, don't bother!

Totally agree. This was a great read. The only problem with the internet is it's greatest strength - it's free. Unfortunately, a lot of writers abuse it (and the English language) by trying to write when they should consume and comment instead.

I want to just quote your post and re-post it.

I love the off canvas concept. It fits so nicely on mobile and in tablets - but this article got me thinking it can/would create a nice experience for large monitors as well. There have been some examples of horizontal scrolling sites (mostly design portfolios...) but it would be cool to see more "Off canvas" content out in the wild for regular screens.

Accordion/collapsible elements implement a similar abstraction on the desktop.

When I saw that this was about UI/UX, I was a little confused; I was expecting something about a Singleton, or a factory or something. Still a really cool read!

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