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General discussion

Responsive Design

Oct 4, 2012 12:56AM PDT

A while ago I was introduced to Media Queries and Responsive Web Design. My immediate reaction was "Wow - this will future proof any new site I manage and ensure it looks great too".

I tried pitching this to my head of IT and he's thrown up some objections. I'd be interested to get some thoughts on these.

The main objection seems to be that Media Queries rely on CSS3, which is only available in IE9 onwards therefore as the majority of users are on older browsers, it makes the technology redundant.

Any thoughts?

Discussion is locked

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At some point you have to dismiss IE.
Oct 4, 2012 8:25AM PDT

Look at the charts for IE noted by http://www.findmebyip.com/litmus/

It's really pathetic if you check it out. You either write forget HTLM5 and CSS or plow ahead thinking the future is really mobile devices and pads with Chrome or better browsers.

-> Know your market.
Bob

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It does depend on your audience
Oct 5, 2012 1:29AM PDT

There isn't a one solution fits all. If you have a website right now that you're thinking about redesigning, it would be best to analyze your current traffic to see how your user's browser capabilities break down. Then you can make an informed decision on how you want to approach this.

In terms of the actual technology, media queries and responsive designs are the way to go in terms of serving one website to multiple devices.

~Sovereign

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Audience
Oct 7, 2012 9:45PM PDT

Interesting points.

I checked and last month we had just over 22% of visitors who used IE8 or older and looking further back this is a declining month on month number. To me this indicates that building a forward facing site is the way to go, and that users with older browsers are a declining share of our market.

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That's a fair assessment
Oct 8, 2012 6:05AM PDT

and I would probably come to the same conclusion.

Maybe websites don't look as fantastic in older browsers, but as long as they remain functional and a visitor can retrieve the information they came for, I'd move ahead in providing the users with updated browsers the best possible experience.

You can even design a little banner for users with older browsers that you display to only them. Just let them know that there is a newer version of their browser out there or that there are alternatives that they can download if they are unable to upgrade. I don't like sites that force you to upgrade and or that pop-up a message left and right, but if you do it elegantly, there's nothing wrong with that.

Lastly, more and more users are increasingly visiting websites via a mobile device, so a good approach is to start designing/developing a website for those devices first and then expand to desktops. Here is a good resource: http://www.lukew.com/presos/preso.asp?26

~Sovereign

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Responsive Design
Apr 9, 2015 2:19PM PDT

Responsive Web design is an approach whereby a designer creates a Web page that "responds to" or resizes itself depending on the type of device it is being seen through. That could be an oversized desktop computer monitor, a laptop, a 10-inch tablet, a 7-inch tablet, or a 4-inch smartphone screen.