Friday, January 24, 2014

Week 1 Outside of Class

This weekend I purchased the textbook and read Responsive Web Design. These are my notes:

  • Jeffrey Zeldman gave us the term "web standards"
  • Jesse James Garrett changed the nature of interaction on the web by minting the word "ajax"
  • Ethan Marcotte coined the term "responsive web design"
CHAPTER 1 - Our Responsive Web
  • Web borrows the print concept of the canvas
    • However, web is one step removed from their actual canvas because once people view their page online, it might look different to different people - some have different font choices, different color displays, and the shape and size of their browser
  • The constraints that designers use can easily be broken
    • A smaller browser causes text to be cut off and the use of a horizontal scroll bar
  • Designers have many more devices and resolutions to design for nowadays
  • Rather than creating spaces that influence the behavior of people that pass through them, responsive designers are investigating ways for a piece of architecture and its inhabitants to mutually influence and inform each other - "responsive architecture"
  • Responsive designers need to let go
    • Instead of creating disconnected designs, each tailored to a particular device or browser, they should treat them as facets of the same experience
    • This means that they can craft sites that are not only more flexible, but can adapt to the media that renders them
  • We need to practice responsive web design - we can embrace the flexibility inherent to the web, without surrendering the control we require as designers
  • It takes three ingredients to create a responsive design
    • A flexible, grid-based layout
    • Flexible images and media
    • Media queries, a module from the CSS3 specification

No comments:

Post a Comment