Going deeper into responsive

This week I read Tim Kadlec’s Implementing Responsive Design: Building Sites for the anywhere, everywhere web. It’s a great read and I think the perfect book to pick up after you’ve read Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte. Tim takes the concepts that Ethan so succinctly puts forth in his book and takes the whole thing farther with lots of sidebars from other really smart folks in the field who are working on the various problems of responsive, things like images, content, mobile first, etc. I also really like that Tim doesn’t shy away from lots of code examples to show exactly how he is solving the problems, getting into the details is great because there are so many varied thoughts on the problems of getting things to move around and work across multiple devices.

…[A] successful responsive approach builds upon the very same prinicples laid down by progressive enhancement. It is, to be blunt, progressive enhancement on steroids.

Tim takes the reader through how to think about making the site by showing the reader how he is making a simple site. Most important for me was that Tim went through a workflow. I have found this is where the real rough patches are. Teams need to adjust their workflows and the way they make a site and it is painful to change. Change is hard and it is taking quite a while for many to adjust their way of thinking and help clients through this transition as well.

The Web is a living, breathing canvas that they can manipulate and bend to their will. The Web is much closer to being software than it is to being print.

I would argue in our world of web applications, most of the web is turning into software and moving away from being the informational brochure sites of past years. Tim acknowledges this and helps us with the technical and workflow details of how to get our own projects to move towards this everywhere web.

Maturing is hard—just ask any acne-ridden teenager. It is necessary though. If we’re ever going to embrace the full potential of the Web, we need to move beyond our comfort zones now and again.