Pragmatic responsive-design-110912113912-phpapp01

pragmatic
responsive design
making the best of old and new techniques

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/dwonderwall/3341419492

This presentation is...
• part case study
• part lessons learned
• part future-thinking

THE CASE STUDY

browser.nokia.com
A small campaign site introducing three new web
browsers for Nokia devices.

Chrome

Opera Mini
Nokia N97

iPad

THE CASE STUDY

Site goals:
• Inform end-users and industry
• Prompt end-users to update their browser
• Experiment with responsive design to support
a global audience and wide range of target devices.

Call to action: Update your browser!

70+ target Nokia devices

Symbian^3/Anna/MeeGo Series 60 Series 40
Touch (+ many w/ keyboards) Touch and non-touch Touch and non-touch
2008-present 2006-present (S60 3rd FP 1/2) 2008-present (~S40 6th Edition)
WebKit browser WebKit browser WebKit browser or
11 devices 45 devices Nokia proxy browser
23 devices
new browser
being promoted

+ all the usual suspects

most Nokia users on S40
feature phones use Opera Mini

v 6.0+

mobile

v. 7+
desktop

initially

no support planned for
legacy and/or XHTML-MP browsers

< v 5.0 Obigo

Windows Mobile
Nokia S40 Lite
Browser

Internet Browser
UC Web

popular Chinese
proxy browser

Part 1: The design process

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jordanﬁscher/63832583

You can’t get there from here
Designing only pixel perfect mock-ups makes it
diﬃcult near-impossible to then think responsively.

an emerging process

etc...

sketches/IA basic visual “live” more “live”
mockups responsive sketches responsive
mockup mockup

no

ok?

“live” responsive small visual mockups
yes mockup to “reality check” to discuss speciﬁc
performance and stylistic issues
progressive enhancement

message/ copy copy content ﬁrst
draft 1 draft 2
brand/
strategy

etc...

sketches/IA basic visual “live” more “live”
mockups responsive sketches responsive
mockup mockup

no

ok?

“live” responsive small visual mockups
yes mockup to “reality check” to discuss speciﬁc
performance and stylistic issues
progressive enhancement

If it’s layout prototype it.
(...on real devices to clarify changes in context and the
impact of naive capabilities and viewport conditions)

If it’s visual design mock it up
(...but then prototype to determine performance, impact
of native fonts and em values, viewport coditions etc.)

PAIN POINT

Too many to mention.
Mental models in particular are getting in the way.
We (our teams, our clients, their marketing departments
etc.) still presume and expect we can control too much.

We have lots of counterproductive
behaviours we need to unlearn.
• Creating elaborate workarounds to suit (what you
perceive) as edge case screen sizes or devices.

• Agonising over small diﬀerences in rendering and
alignment (remember...each device you haven’t testing
on will have its own quirks.)

• Creating elaborate reference lists of screen sizes,
pixel densities in the belief that with enough data
you can design for each device.

• etc...

Part 2: The CSS strategy

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/wscullin/3770015203

TECHNIQUE

Mobile ﬁrst
Design for (the simplest) mobile browser ﬁrst.

“
The absence of a media query
is in fact, the ﬁrst media query.
Bryan Rieger, Rethinking the Mobile Web

begin with a lightweight default

A
fully ﬂexible with default
B styles for navigation,
fonts, content and
C
no media query

TECHNIQUE

Embrace the cascade
Don’t merely swap style sheets...let it cascade.

This creates a more nimble, versatile and future-proof
layout and can reduce jumpiness during device
re-orientation.

each style sheet augments the others
breakpoint breakpoint
style sheet 1

augment original
A A
B style sheet with
B C
(only) the style
C changes that are
needed to enhance
the layout

< xx px wide xx px to xxx px
(or unable to
understand further
instructions)

each style sheet augments the others
breakpoint breakpoint breakpoint
style sheet 1 style sheet 2

A C
A A B
B augment
B C
once
again for
C TVs etc.

< xx px wide xx px to xxx px >xxx px wide
(or unable to
understand further
instructions)

TECHNIQUE

Using major and minor breakpoints
Create media queries inside of media queries.

content or
device speciﬁc
tweaks

Why we call them major and minor breakpoints

major layout
changes

a common approach
One style sheet with media
queries on the inside.
styles.css

@media {
(min-width: 320px)
}

a single css file is network
@media { eﬃcient, but includes
(min-width: 480px) unnecessary style data that
} all devices end up downloading

@media {
(min-width: 640px)
}

@media {
(min-width: 768px)
}

a more robust option
Multiple style sheets with
media queries on the inside.

MAJOR
BREAKPOINTS
IN DOCUMENT
HEAD
basic.css mobile.css desktop.css

MINOR
(typically) @media { @media {
BREAKPOINTS
no media (min-width: 480px) (min-width: 768px)
WITHIN EACH queries } }
STYLE SHEET
@media {
(min-width: 640px)
}

MAJOR BREAKPOINTS IN DOCUMENT HEAD

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheets/base.css"
media="screen, handheld" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheets/mobile.css"
media="only screen and (min-width: 320px)" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="stylesheets/desktop.css"
media="only screen and (min-width: 720px)" />

MINOR BREAKPOINTS WITHIN EACH STYLE SHEET

@media screen and (min-width: 1024px) {
section ul li {
width: 20%;
}
}

don’t multiple style sheets
cause multiple http requests?
(which will aﬀect performance)

Yes!...but (as we will see) we have
bigger issues...
Otherwise known as...choose your partners wisely.

but it’s just
“one line of code”

= 84Kb, ~10 http requests
(or 1.340 Seconds) I’m wondering if he
ran this test on a
Facebook Like PC with broadband?
Button

Source: Matthew Ogborne, Facebook Like Button = 84Kb or 1.340 Seconds?
More great examples on Steve Souders’ P3PC project site

3rd party requests don’t just include widgets,
they can also include:
• ads
• analytics
• utilities (comment utilities, font hosting etc.)
• libraries and polyﬁlls
Many of these services are not yet mobile friendly.
(And many that claim they are, merely support certain mobile browsers.
They may not necessarily be lightweight or conscious of performance).

everything has dependencies
Otherwise known as
everyone has ‘partners’

Source: Luma Partners

Example: 1 line of code spawns 49 server calls (including 21 redirects)

“What happens next is the scary part:
You eﬀectively lose all control.”
- Web Performance Today, Fourth Party Calls

Conclusion
If a few well chosen http requests enable you
to improve the experience-go for it.
(then take a long hard look at other requests that may be lurking)

TECHNIQUE

choosing breakpoints

Disclaimer
There is no “perfect set” of breakpoints.
Set your breakpoints based on your project goals,
your target audience, your typical device market share,
the weight and nature of your content, the nature of
your design...

(P) = Portrait
Example (L) = Landscape
(L*) = Landscape w/ native viewport adaptation
major breakpoints
major layout changes

Major Breakpoint 1 Major Breakpoint 2
(media query in document head) (media query in document head) Major Breakpoint 3
(media query in document head)

1024

320 px to 720 px wide 720 px to 1024 px

320 720
< 320 px wide
and/or unable to nothing is
understand further here...but
some tablets
instructions that’s ok!
most NetBooks
iPhone (P) many Desktops
many Android (P)
many BlackBerry
S60 QWERTY
Most S60 (L)
S40 QWERTY

(P) = Portrait
minor breakpoints
content-related tweaks

Minor (media query in document head)
Breakpoint
(@media)
Minor Minor Minor
Breakpoint Breakpoint Breakpoint
(@media) (@media) (@media)

360 480 640 768 1024


320 720
< 320 px wide iPhone (L*)
and/or unable to Android (L*) nothing is
understand further Symbian some here...but iPad (P)
touch (P) some tablets
instructions Symbian that’s ok! some Android most NetBooks
iPhone (P) touch (L) tablets (P) many Desktops
many Android (P) some some
many BlackBerry tablets (L) Symbian
S60 QWERTY touch (L)
Most S60 (L)
S40 QWERTY

(P) = Portrait
...and so on

Breakpoint
Minor Breakpoint
(@media)
for small devices Minor Minor Minor
w/media query Breakpoint Breakpoint Breakpoint
support (@media) (@media) (@media)

TVs
240 360 480 640 768 1024


320 720
< 320 px wide iPhone (L*)
and/or unable to Android (L*) nothing is
some
many Android (P) some
Android (P) some
many BlackBerry tablets (L)
many S40 (P) Symbian
most S60 (P) S60 QWERTY touch (L)
Most S60 (L)
S40 QWERTY

as you can see, this has the potential to get out of hand...

Minor
Breakpoint
Major Breakpoint 1 (@media) Major Breakpoint 2
Breakpoint Minor
Minor Breakpoint
(@media) Breakpoint
for small devices Minor Minor Minor (@media) Minor
w/media query Breakpoint Breakpoint Breakpoint Breakpoints
support (@media)
(@media) (@media) (@media)

TVs
240 360 480 600 640 768 800 1024 1280 1366

320 px to 720 px wide 720 px to 1024 px many
laptops
720 some
< 320 px wide 320 some
iPhone (L*) tablets
and/or unable to nothing is tablets (L)
Android (L*) (L)
some
many Android (P) some
Android (P) some
many BlackBerry tablets (L)
many S40 (P) Symbian
most S60 (P) S60 QWERTY touch (L)
Most S60 (L) some
S40 QWERTY tablets (P)

Existential question of the day:
Does it make sense to create a breakpoint
if there is no known device with that
screen size?
(...or put more bluntly is it worth setting a breakpoint
just so stuﬀ looks pretty when you resize your
desktop browser?)

“
But most people aren't scaling
the site...that's mostly a
developer behaviour.
@tubes

Follow-up question:
Does it therefore make sense to create a
breakpoint just because there IS a known
device with that screen size?

get to know regional
device and browser market share

review your existing
traﬃc logs
(even if your site isn’t mobile friendly,
your logs will contain mobile traﬃc)

then determine your
key breakpoints

128x160

240x320

320x480

1280x768
1024x768
480x800

...but remember
Screen dimensions are only one factor to consider.

don’t rely on desktop tools
or emulators

how will this device’s native fonts
compare to desktop emulation?

not accurate if your viewport is
set to device-width
note:
moving
target value

what if it’s not the native browser?
once you get below ~800 px
Opera Mini for iPad has a bit more chrome and
less CSS support ..how will that aﬀect things? all that matters is how it
looks on real devices

example
real-world major and minor breakpoints

major
breakpoints

Default Major Breakpoint 1
No media query 321 - 720 px

Major Breakpoint 2
721 px onwards

major
breakpoints
background
image removed
to reduce page
weight and layout is primarily
reduce risk on centered
older devices

Default Major Breakpoint 1
No media query 321 - 720 px

‘desktop’ layout
including ﬂoats

Major Breakpoint 2
721 px onwards

Note: Screenshots taken
on a Mac, proportions, minor
font sizes, and end result
vary more relevantly on
each device.
breakpoints

Minor Breakpoint
@360 px (Nokia touch)

Minor Breakpoint
@480 px (Nokia touch)

Minor Breakpoint
@768 px (iPad)

Note: Screenshots taken
on a Mac, proportions, 50% 50%
font sizes, and end result
vary more relevantly on Minor Breakpoint
each device. @360 px (Nokia touch)

background
45% aligned bottom

70% 30%
background aligned top

Minor Breakpoint
50% @480 px (Nokia touch)

55% 45%

custom Nokia font 3em
line background x-position
height adjustment

Minor Breakpoint
30%
@768 px (iPad)

alignment (top/bottom) and x-position
adjusted to suit the content (image)
and context (screen size)

image slides
up and down
revealing
more (or less)
of the content

responsive divider implemented using border-image
(degrades gracefully on all but IE)

Component adapts to suit differing browser environments
e.g. slight differences in layout caused by different viewport implementations,
differing baseline em values, wider/narrower native fonts, padding and
margin variations etc.

Designing breakpoints also reveals
another important issue.
We cannot presume that screen size maps to browser
(or device) capabilities.

PAIN POINT

• good CSS and • strong CSS and
• very basic CSS JavaScript JavaScript support
and JavaScript
• no touch screen
• no touch screen but using proxy
• advanced CSS • early WebKit browser such as
and JavaScript • XHTML MP
Opera Mini
• touch events
• modern WebKit

when queried, these devices will all return a 320 pixel wide viewport
value but each have vastly diﬀerent browsers

Responsive design will only get you half way.
Always pair responsive design with a feature detection
and adaptation strategy.

STEP 1 STEP 2
Media queries detect Feature detection
screen size and serve clariﬁes actual browser
size-appropriate styles capabilities and enables
and behaviours further enhancements

+
appropriately
enhanced look functionality
layout sized
and feel enhancements
graphics

someday we’ll
(even) more
(hopefully) be
appropriate
basic look basic able to detect
graphics or
and feel functionality other useful
media formats
stuﬀ like
(e.g. SVG)
bandwidth

TIP

The more (accurate) information you can
detect, the more intelligently you can adapt.
Client-side feature detection is only one of the tools
you can use.
Others include device databases, user agent strings and
your own (domain and region-speciﬁc) tacit knowledge.

TIP

Why should we need tacit knowledge when
we can detect browser capabilities using
JavaScript or tools such as Modernizr?
Because ‘support’ is rarely a binary thing.
Also....some browsers lie.

TIP

More information about feature detection, will be covered in Bryan’s
Breaking Development presentation: Adaptation

Part 3: responsive images

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mrs_logic/4548681436

TECHNIQUE

Serving appropriate images to each device
A pragmatic approach using both server and client.

most responsive image techniques
focus primarily on the client

design
mobile
ﬁrst

include images on more advanced browsers (or at orientation
for the simplest change), detect the screen size (using JavaScript),
screen size/ rewrite/adapt the image tag, then load an
browser ﬁrst appropriate larger image

(...but let’s be honest, most responsive sites are still doing THIS)
Read this now: Where are the mobile first responsive designs?

design
“desktop first”

put the burden of screen size
including images
detection, resizing and/or
for the largest
loading of new images on
screen size first
the smallest devices

both impose a heavy burden on
constrained devices
depending on the 3. adapt fetching new
technique the initial markup images =
‘larger’ images may extra hp
already have been requests and
downloaded latency

2. spider 4. request
DOM new image

1. detect 5. repaint,
screen reﬂow as
size needed

“
Optimize front-end performance ﬁrst,
that's where 80% or more of the end-user
response time is spent.
— Yahoo: The importance of front-end performance

“ Optimize front-end performance ﬁrst,
that's where 80% or more of the end-user
response time is spent.
— Yahoo: The importance of front-end performance

This was written with the desktop in mind...
research suggests performance impact on
mobile is closer to 97%.

Web Performance Today: 97% of mobile end-user response time happens on the client

heavy lifting
(adaptation, ﬁltering,
STRATEGY server conditional
http://domain.org resource/content
loading)

just-in-time
client
tweaks

to determine
device screen to override the
size UA string odd property
device based on
database tacit data existing
to identify device knowledge
and therefore,
screen size

see Bryan’s Adaptation
HEAVY LIFTING presentation for greater
device request detail on this technique

to determine
device screen to override the
size UA string odd property
device based on
database tacit data existing
to identify device knowledge
and therefore,
screen size

data application
video
logic
generate cookie
final markup
images

see Bryan’s Adaptation
HEAVY LIFTING presentation for greater
detail on this technique

final
markup

cookie
resource profile
bundle
info

device gets the most
appropriate images
on ﬁrst load

(in most cases)
no additional client-side
processing is required
DELIVERY

images

new images are
final only fetched if
markup actually needed

cookie
resource profile
bundle
info
JavaScript
changes assets

on
orientation
change
TWEAKS
@media
changes layout
and other styles

uses onResize event
(because onOrientation change
doesn’t work on all devices)

JavaScript also swaps images when
BONUS screen is resized. This enables you to
test adaptation on desktop browsers!

TIP

...use the contextual intelligence built into
the proﬁle cookie to implement other useful
enhancements.
These could include:
• more appropriate image formats (e.g. SVG)
• mobile-friendly alternates for 3rd party widgets
• alternative components
• alternate content representations (e.g. tabular data)

EXAMPLE

Progressively enhanced content.
“One Web” is a great ideal, but sometimes, adding or
removing content based on contextual instructions can
dramatically imrpove the experience.

UA string
GOAL
determine device platform
improve browser (e.g. S60 3rd Edition)
update instructions
on browser.nokia.com

device
database

determine device platform determine device model
(in cases where UA string (e.g. Nokia N8-00)
couldn’t provide it) so we can
do this...

choose appropriate device-
speciﬁc message (populated with
device model number)

generate enhance existing content with
final markup device-speciﬁc message

Note: enhancement only as we didn’t want to
presume people on a PC might not want to
know how to update a featurephone

Server-side adaptation pain points
• reliance on cookies
• say good-bye to the intelligent default
• unknown devices
• CDNs anyone?

PAIN POINT

Reliance on cookies
• what happens if cookies are disabled?
• what do we do about the EU Cookie Directive?

PAIN POINT

Say goodbye to the ‘intelligent default’
• how do we create intelligent defaults when there is
no longer a ‘normal/average/typical’ screen size or
even a ‘typical’ device?

mobile first?

<something or other> first

desktop first?

PAIN POINT

What about unknown devices?
• what happens to new devices that are not yet in a
device database or your tacit knowledge database?

TIP

an 80/20 approach will get you quite far
• on many site, 80% of traﬃc seems to come
from about 20% of devices
• of the other 20%, most are known devices
• regularly reviewing your logs can help catch
whatever is left

TIP

User agent strings are not evil.
User agent strings can be incredibly useful...so long as you
understand their limitations.

operating
version device
system

Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.4; Series60/5.0 NokiaN97;
Proﬁle/MIDP-2.1 Conﬁguration/CLDC-1.1) AppleWebKit/525
(KHTML, like Gecko) BrowserNG/7.1.4 hint at (general)
super useful in capabilities
conjunction with tacit browser
knowledge database version

PAIN POINT

CDNs anyone?
• CDNs currently couldn’t care less about device context.
Will aggressive caching turn into a problem?

(Would we even have created CDNs, or have designed them
quite diﬀerently if multi-context content had come ﬁrst?)

Part 4: responsive workﬂows

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jurvetson/5201796697

visual consistency
(in a given context) message clarity & thematic consistency

alignment

Desktop

Mobile
key goals
when designing
responsive images
Basic

we began with
a “normal” workﬂow

each graphic designed
in one context

using Adobe
Fireworks

but rapidly switched to
a more context-sensitive
approach
approach

Beneﬁts

Designing graphics together provides
a more global and contextual view.
• Helps eliminate alignment errors, continuity issues etc.
• Helps maintain thematic consistency. Images don’t
have to be identical but the overall message should
not be lost.

• Tip: Don’t forget that you can also vary ﬁle types
(e.g. PNG, JPG) to increase performance at certain sizes.

PAIN POINT

It’s still not ﬂexible enough...
Design tools enabling the use of variables, conditionals etc.
would be really nice right about now.

Part 5: embrace opportunities

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/ganesha_isis/4439563089

We realised half way through the project that
with only minor changes, we could support
another 80-100 Nokia feature phones.
Many of these older, low-end devices would also be
eligible to update to the new (proxy-based) Nokia
Browser for mobile phones.

UA string
Goal:
get information out
device
database to more people
determine device
platform
everyone older S40
else devices
change doctype from
no change required HTML5 to XHTML MP
to mobile ﬁrst
responsive approach serve a lightweight
CSS MP style sheet

generate generate
final markup final markup

So how did it go?
We soft-launched the site 5 days ago...

since then it’s been visited by people in

133 countries

on 51 diﬀerent
Nokia devices
(and of course many non-
Nokia devices)

oldest smallest

Nokia N70 Nokia 1680
XHTML MP XHTML MP
176 x 208 px 128 x 160 px
2005 2008

3 of these users including the odd
were in the US!
unexpected ones

So far...the most popular page
(just behind the home page) is the page
with instructions to update your
browser :-)

a few ﬁnal words...

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/dwonderwall/3341419492

on being pragmatic

Perform a cost-beneﬁt analysis
for every technique you use.

on being pragmatic

Old doesn’t mean bad and new
doesn’t mean good.
If a technique does more good than
bad it’s fair game.
(Until a signiﬁcantly better one comes along.)

on being pragmatic

...develop your mobile strategy but
in the meantime...there are
useful things you can do today

STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3
Review your traﬃc Test your site on those Develop an action plan
logs and determine devices and determine to address common issues
what mobile devices where the experience such as these:
are accessing your breaks down
site today • key content that is only
accessible on hover
• key controls that are too
small to manipulate on
touch screens
• modal windows that
become unusable on small
screens
• unnecessary http requests
• unnecessarily heavy
graphics and media

repeat...

@yiibu

s
contact u
at
hello@yiibu.com thank you

many thanks to the
amazing photographers
on

http://www.ﬂickr.com/creativecommons/by-2.0

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/tinou/453593446

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