The Web no longer concerns only desktop or notebook devices. Web technology has now spread to various devices ranging from large desktop monitors to tablets, Smartphones, smart TVs, and outdoor displays. It has also increased the functionality and interfaces of sites and the way we interact with them.
Making a website responsive is not an option anymore. Hence, this is the time to hone our developing skills using grid system frameworks and providing a differentiated and enriched user experience.
In this book, we achieve all this using CSS3 and jQuery, which offer great integration options between devices, OSs, and different browser versions. Another advantage of using jQuery is the speed of development achieved by using plugins maintained by the collaborative community. We do not need to reinvent something that is already done! Furthermore, improvements are always welcome and your collaboration to the community will help everybody.
Chapter 1, Exploring Responsive Web Design, begins by explaining the concept of responsiveness created by generating wireframes for websites and adapting it to different screens. The chapter goes on to explain the mobile-first concept.
Chapter 2, Designing Responsive Layouts/Grids, helps you make flexible website structures and then focuses on explaining the usage of responsive grid systems and how it improves agility during development.
Chapter 3, Building Responsive Navigation Menu, has several analyzes and step-by-step implementations for each navigation menu pattern; this helps in the choice of the right option for each situation.
Chapter 4, Designing Responsive Text, explains the conversion of text to relative units and then their customization for beautiful and responsive heading titles.
Chapter 5, Preparing Images and Videos, explains handling high-resolution images in different formats. It then goes on to explain the art of direction importance when viewing images on Smartphones.
Chapter 6, Building Responsive Image Sliders, explains four different image-slider plugins and their implementation and shows useful touch libraries complementing the interaction.
Chapter 7, Designing Responsive Tables, delves into managing the different approaches for creating responsive tables, solving the difficulties faced while adjusting width for different screen sizes.
Chapter 8, Implementing Responsive Forms, discusses the highlights of form element features that improve the user experience by filling the form in on mobile devices and a good, responsive form framework.
Chapter 9, Testing the Responsiveness, discusses ways to perform responsive testing across various browsers and device platforms so as to prevent unexpected behaviors.
Chapter 10, Ensuring Browser Support, explains fallback and why it is deemed important. It then goes on to explain how to detect each browser feature that does / might not work for that browser and provides the correct support for these errors.
Chapter 11, Useful Responsive Plugins, shows different plugins for website structure, menu navigation, and so on, complementing the solutions already seen in other chapters.
Chapter 12, Improving Website Performance, explains major ways to analyze website performance using online tools and recommends tips to get better results.
All the knowledge acquired by you after reading this book will be better assimilated if you already have an idea of the website you want to convert into a responsive one, because it can be made during the chapter exercises.
The list of software you will need is Apache HTTP Server, Adobe Photoshop CS5 or earlier, some code editor such as Sublime Text 2, and Internet browsers, such as Firefox and Chrome. Also, for testing the examples and exercises, it will be good for you to have mobile devices such as Smartphones or tablets.
Responsive Web Design with jQuery and CSS3 is aimed at web designers who are interested in building device-agnostic websites. Some exposure to jQuery, CSS3, and HTML5 will be beneficial.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "The HTML5 specification includes new structural elements, such as header, nav, article, and footer."
A block of code is set as follows:
.orientation_landscape .div-example {
border: 2px solid red;
}When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
<svg width="96" height="96">
<image xlink:href="svg.svg" src="svg.png" width="96" height="96" />
</svg>New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".
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