I have been reading up on responsive web design (RWD) and trying to wrap my brain around this concept.
Is responsive web design really the way that we should go for mobile development? I like the idea of having 1 site that should work on many different devices like desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones.
On a desktop I have a wide screen, so my website works as what it was designed. It has a column with most of my main content and a left or right less wide column (depending where you are on the site) for navigation purposes. How does RWD determine what columns are stacked upon which columns? Does it start from the left of the screen, load first the contents of the left column and then the contents of the right column? Is it possible to maybe drop a column so that it does not display on certain devices? Can RWD handle stuff like this? The wider the device the more content you want to display, and the less wide you want just the necessary stuff to display.
How does RWD handle more of the cheaper phones? Phones that aren't really smart phones? What happens if a phone can't handle RWD, what then?
How do you get your data grid with 20 columns to display on a mobile phone that doesn't have a wide screen? And paging?
It's stuff like this that I don't know if RWD is for me? I like neat sites instead of having everything squashed in just to get the contents into the boarders of the phone's screen.
Besides Twitter bootstrap, any other decent RWD frameworks to consider? I've heard of a few decent frameworks.
I have been reading up on responsive web design (RWD) and trying to wrap my brain around this concept.
Is responsive web design really the way that we should go for mobile development? I like the idea of having 1 site that should work on many different devices like desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile phones.
On a desktop I have a wide screen, so my website works as what it was designed. It has a column with most of my main content and a left or right less wide column (depending where you are on the site) for navigation purposes. How does RWD determine what columns are stacked upon which columns? Does it start from the left of the screen, load first the contents of the left column and then the contents of the right column? Is it possible to maybe drop a column so that it does not display on certain devices? Can RWD handle stuff like this? The wider the device the more content you want to display, and the less wide you want just the necessary stuff to display.
How does RWD handle more of the cheaper phones? Phones that aren't really smart phones? What happens if a phone can't handle RWD, what then?
How do you get your data grid with 20 columns to display on a mobile phone that doesn't have a wide screen? And paging?
It's stuff like this that I don't know if RWD is for me? I like neat sites instead of having everything squashed in just to get the contents into the boarders of the phone's screen.
Besides Twitter bootstrap, any other decent RWD frameworks to consider? I've heard of a few decent frameworks.
This is a really big question. In an nutshell it typically works like this:
You can use ajax to load additional content etc if needed, though usually you'd be having the same content (why would 30-40% of your visitors want stuff hidden from them?)
You are typically focussing here on Smart Phones, not old phones that don't have modern web browsers.
For specifics, e.g. grids with 20 columns, it's hard.
Perhaps flip the table so it's the other way, and has 20 rows, display it as a graph, make it slide left and right, or just consider why that is in there at all – that's an unusual thing to have on a website.
Paging is usually done as an infinite scroll – e.g. Apple's Mail app.
As far as frameworks go, there aren't any that will solve everything for you. The grid aspect of Zurb's Foundation and Bootstrap is useful, but it won't make everything suddently work.
Well it is more a technique and a collection of best practice, then something that does actively something for you.
Creating Responsive (Web) Designs means to offer the visitor/user the best using experience for any device used.
But how you have to design your content (webpage, webapp, app) in conjunction with screen size and input device so that you have the best using experience is something you need to figure out for your special use case yourself.
There are techniques how you can find out which elements are important for your user and how you should display them, but there is no general rule which elements needs to be at which place. (The are always rules that are true, but there is also some matter of taste and change over time)
So how to do Response Designe then? Well first you have to find out which elements of your content are the important one and if the importance of these elements differ from the use case (have you ever thought about that a desktop user is probably expecting other informations from the same page/app then a mobile user)
If you know which elements are the important one you can think of how to present them. The importent part here is for sure the screen size, but also what input device is used, you don't want to show a phone use a tiny list or small navigation buttons.
And there we have already an other problem. What is about tables that are used with a stylus? What about laptops that have a touchscreen? How to take them into account? This is also something that is up to you, because the way devices are used changes over time.
For sure there are different frameworks that help you or already do many things automatically. But you should not expect that they will create the best user experience. There frameworks have, lets say templates for the mon situation use cases and they indeed would automatically change your menu and determin how to display it.
But Responsive Design does not mean that something automatically determines what needs to be changed for which screen size. But that you define how the different parts should look and behave on for the different use cases (either by doing yourself or by using a library that tries to do the best for you)
To "handle" cheaper phones, not smart phones, you could use
@media handheld and (orientation: portrait) { ... }
It would be intuitive if smartphones, which are "handheld" would return true on checking for "handheld" but they do not. So if you wanted to optimize for old handheld devices, you could media handheld.
Also note that @media screen and ... or some such query would not be targeting older, non-smart-phones because they are not "media screen".
This answers one of your various questions. But a very very small percentage of users are on this type of device, at least today. Depending on your demographic, you are probably best off to ignore those old phones.
Your Responsive web design (RWD) solution in bootstrap. If you want 20 grid system in your website, you can use customize bootstrap CSS using this link: http://getbootstrap./customize/ . This way you convert site in mobile view. According to my point this is best way to solve your problem.
