Nobody outside of our Web Design world cares if the site is responsive, they just care if it works. And they probably have some battle scars from fighting anemic mobile sites.
Sure, it will take some time to change peoples’ mental model of what it means when a site looks different on their pocket-sized screens. But we must be doing something to help encourage that change, right? It’s not like we’re just silently launching responsive sites under the cover of night!
What methods do we use tell our audience that the new site we’ve just launched is new, improved, Responsive, and not one of those awful mobile sites you might be used to?
Val Head: Hello, World! This Site Is Now Responsive (If You Care)
A designer who freelances or runs their own agency, may find that they need to confidently explain technical concepts to clients. The end client is often unaware of the various specialisms behind launching a new site and relies on their web designer to guide them through the process. Therefore even if you tend to outsource development work, having an understanding of development can pay dividends in allowing you to discuss the technical parts of the job with your clients. In addition, when working with developers your knowledge will help to speed up communication and prevent misunderstandings.
A great article from Rachel Andrew.
.net magazine: 10 web development concepts designers should know
Even when experiencing the same stimulus at the same time, many users will have completely unique experiences. That doesn’t mean an experience can’t be architected that utilizes knowledge about cognition to increase goal conversion. We create experiences to illicit a response from users; those users’ responses are either extrinsic (e.g., subscribing to a newsletter) or intrinsic (e.g., developing brand loyalty).
UX Magazine: Cognition & The Intrinsic User Experience
There will soon be a HTML native method to retrieve a device appropriate <img>. It too will repeat the very same environment tests that both our CSS and JS have performed in order to modify their behaviour to the client’s capabilities. And in the case of HTML it will repeat these environment tests for every single <picture> on the page.
This is incredibly inefficient, and has the potential to make hand-authoring web documents implausible. Not to mention the problem that’s really to blame: Our technologies need to sense the environment in unison and adapt to a design, not to a device.
Matt Wilcox: Impending problems with authoring responsive designs
Made with HTML/CSS (no images, no JS) this is a simple interactive experiment with responsive design techniques. Using simple layout wireframes, this illustrates how a series of pages could work across these different devices, by simulating how the layout of each page would change responsively, to suit the context.
This Man’s Life: Responsive Layouts, Responsively Wireframed
Back in 2011, Microsoft has revealed a Compact Inspector feature for Internet Explorer 9, which allows web developers to quickly notice the IE’s platform changes and tweak sites accordingly.
Now, with the new Metro UI overtaking pretty much everything, the software giant has revealed a tweaked version specifically for IE10 and as you might have guessed, it does use Metro tiles.
FavBrowser: New For Internet Explorer 10: Compat Inspector
Compat Inspector is a JavaScript-based testing tool that analyzes your site while it runs. Compat Inspector reports patterns of interaction which cause issues in recent modes. This allows you to identify problems quickly without memorizing a bunch of documentation or searching through the entirety of your site’s code. We developed Compat Inspector during the course of IE9 to speed up the process of recognizing common issues across different sites and have now updated it for IE10. Along the way, many members of the IE team contributed to the set of test cases that make up the rules in Compat Inspector.
IEBlog: IE10 Compat Inspector
So why the incredibly wide range in Android screen sizes? What we in fact are seeing is a classic case of unintended consequences. In this case, the consequences of a wide ecosystem coupled with some of Android’s more user-friendly design decisions.
Stephanie Rieger: The ‘trouble’ with Android