Jan
25
Written by:
jazvt
1/25/2011 11:43 AM
A year is a long time in the world of technology. Few things have shelf lives that are in excess of a few months, and technology often becomes obsolete before you have had the time to learn it, let alone master it. With the onset of rapid development in consumer hardware, it is more challenging than ever for software platforms to keep up - the iPhone app that you had designed last year doesn't fit nicely on the iPad, the mobile version of the website that you had developed only a few months ago doesn't display nicely on a 7-inch device. Should you develop an iPhone app or an android one?
A storm of confusion is also emerging in the web development industry. Creating websites that are functional across devices, browsers, and (mobile) operating systems is getting to be more challenging than ever. Getting things right on the "size" front alone isn't easy. Almost 30% of displays are larger than 1280 pixels, while 960 pixels is often too wide for the mobile sector. Old-school fluid (or liquid) layouts no longer solve the problem... what kind of magic does it take to get something to work gracefully at 600 pixels AND 1920 pixels?
Late last year, a proposed solution went by the name of "responsive web design". This involves designing layouts that respond to the devices in which they are being viewed. For those who are familiar with CSS, this neat piece of technology uses CSS media queries, letting you attach a different stylesheet to your website depending on which device the website is being viewed. CSS frameworks that use this idea are slowly beginning to emerge, and should be the standard before long, taking over the popular 960 grid framework that had been bread and butter so far.
With the emergence of such a wide array of devices that are internet-capable, testing is also getting harder by the day. Being able to actually examine your design on an iPad, the Nexus, an iPhone, a large-screen display, and even the Kindle can get to be both time-consuming and expensive (especially when you don't own them all - and it is arguably hard to justify buying your fourth mobile phone, even for development!). Internet-based cross-browser and cross-device testing has been around for a while, but we predict it will get more important than ever. A Google search for ‘cross browser testing’ should bring up a variety of free and paid options that developers will find useful.
And as far as layouts go - an excellent starting point for developers is CSSGrid: http://cssgrid.net/ This framework takes on 12-columns and is fluid all the way down to a mobile phone! These techniques have loads of potential, and it's fair to say that the new game has only begun. For now, what is quite definite is that this is spirit in which web pages should be designed, if they are meant to last all the way into the future!
Copyright ©2011 JAZ Design Company
1 comment(s) so far...
Re: The Biggest Challenges of 2011- The Emergence of Responsive Web Design
Best option for change in vertical for your website is keep design layout as liquid so that it can suit to different parameter respectively.
By Sherlyn on
8/8/2011 5:18 AM
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