Responsive websites

FrontPage97

New Member
How much weight of importance do you give to having a responsive that accommodates iPhones? I don't like to compromise a site that works nicely on a full sized monitor and an iPad.

I guess if someone really wants to cater to iPhones you could have a landing page with links to 2 or 3 sites.
 

ronaldroe

Super Moderator
Staff member
I build all sites as responsive from the ground up. If you consider it from the beginning, it really isn't any more work. Mobile browser usage is high enough that it would be beneficial to build that way.
 

FrontPage97

New Member
Mobile browser usage is high enough that it would be beneficial to build that way.
What percentage of users are on mobile browsers?

I just read that 13.2% of all unique visitors to the 40,000 websites that California-based Net Applications monitors for clients.
 

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
like ron, i like to build from mobile first.

i dont know what the stats are but suffice to say it's enough traffic on mobiles to be worth your time...
 

chrishirst

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Of course but my reply was more about the actual percentages rather than user volumes in general.

It's a bit like people using the browser stats from W3Schools to be the same over the entire Internet, or the minuscule number of Alexa users extrapolating to every user, the few may not be representative of the many.

Websites that are of a "social nature" are going to have a higher percentage of visitors on mobile devices whereas an informational site would have a trend more towards desktop or laptop users. Trying to follow a tutorial on say, C++ or studying a treatise on chemical engineering would be somewhat difficult on a 5" screen.
 

Phreaddee

Super Moderator
Staff member
or not. much better to learn responsive off your own bat, rather than using a bloated framework.
 

Hazey Coder

New Member
or not. much better to learn responsive off your own bat, rather than using a bloated framework.

Learning responsive on your own just means learning @media queries, floats, margins, and percentages -- it's not a huge thing. I say to use bootstrap because you can learn by great example. As long as someone can use firebug well they can discover responsiveness very easily by exploring how bootstrap does it, and then be able to create their own systems based upon that.

Just remember 4 rules: float elements left, give them a percentage width, apply margins except for the first or last element in a row, and use @media queries for granular CSS.
 

Edge

Member
Just remember 4 rules: float elements left, give them a percentage width, apply margins except for the first or last element in a row, and use @media queries for granular CSS.

I'd add a 'few' things to the list:
  • Set max-width: 100% on images
  • Use ems or rems for font size values
  • provide support for older browsers (IE 8 and below) , which you probably have to do anyway if you are using HTML 5
  • make background images flexible using background-size property
  • set initial-scale=1.0 and width=device-width using meta element
 

Handpickedhp

New Member
I like skeleton, more simple than bootstrap so for me it's more simple to build something more custom on it.

But I would say yes, non-responsive website in 2013 ....
 
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