After reading through A List Apart’s article What I Learned About the Web in 2011 I decided I needed to make a second effort at getting into mobile web design. This article chronicles the epic struggle between myself and the perils of designing for a screen that fits in my hand.
Part 1 will discover the philosophy behind responsive design and how to apply these new bits of brain lightning to our current processes. My odyssey will continue in part 2 as I get into the technical side of using techniques like @media queries to create a responsive design. Hit the jump to read on.
I remember very well a visit to Florida with my mother to see my aunt and uncle. One night my uncle and I were geeking out on his new computer and he showed me something I would never forget: Google.com. Given, it’s hard to avoid the existence of Google these days but what I remember about it so well was the impact it had on me. I had been using MSN Search and Yahoo! Search for so long that the simple interface seemed almost alien to me.
Today, more than a decade later, you can still go to Google.com and see the exact same page I saw that evening my uncle showed it to me with few modifications. They aimed for something and they got it oh-so-right. What makes Google different is their lack of concern about the revenue model. It’s not that they don’t care about making money but that their goal is to et the product perfect first, then make adjustments. In the early days people would always wonder how Google was going to make any money… Their response was usually, “right now, we’re focusing on how to make everything much easier to find online. In doing so, we believe that we’ll uncover a revenue model at some point.” And so they did.
This is just for all those who seem to believe that I’m taking my disdain for James Cameron’s favorite new FREE font too far… Pr*tty Sh*tty presents a wonderful blog in keeping with my ideals. Enjoy.
