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Table Of Contents

Mastering Responsive Web Design

By : Ricardo Zea

3.9 (10)

Buy this Book

Mastering Responsive Web Design

3.9 (10)

By: Ricardo Zea

Buy this Book

Overview of this book

Building powerful and accessible websites and apps using HTML5 and CSS3 is a must if we want to create memorable experiences for our users. In the ever-changing world of web design and development, being proficient in responsive web design is no longer an option: it is mandatory. Each chapter will take you one step closer to becoming an expert in RWD. Right from the start your skills will be pushed as we introduce you to the power of Sass, the CSS preprocessor, to increase the speed of writing repetitive CSS tasks. We’ll then use simple but meaningful HTML examples, and add ARIA roles to increase accessibility. We’ll also cover when desktop-first or mobile-first approaches are ideal, and strategies to implement a mobile-first approach in your HTML builds. After this we will learn how to use an easily scalable CSS grid or, if you prefer, how to use Flexbox instead. We also cover how to implement images and video in both responsive and responsible ways. Finally, we build a solid and elegant typographic scale, and make sure your messages and communications display correctly with responsive emails.

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Harness the Power of Sass for Responsive Web Design

How does Sass work?

The basic concepts of Sass for RWD

Summary

2. Marking Our Content with HTML5

The

element

The

element

The

element

The

element

The

Using WAI-ARIA landmark roles to increase accessibility

A full HTML5 example page with ARIA roles and meta tags

Output screenshots for desktop and mobile

Summary

3. Mobile-first or Desktop-first?

Create your designs in a desktop-first view, but implement them with mobile-first

Sass mixins for the mobile-first and desktop-first media queries

Dealing with legacy browsers

How to deal with high-density screens

Sometimes RWD is not necessarily the right solution

Retrofitting an old website with RWD

Retrofitting with AWD

Retrofitting with RWD

Summary

4. CSS Grids, CSS Frameworks, UI Kits, and Flexbox for RWD

What is a grid?

CSS grids

CSS frameworks

UI kits

The pros and cons of CSS frameworks for RWD

Creating a custom CSS grid

Building a sample page with the custom CSS grid

Stop using CSS grids, use Flexbox!

Summary

5. Designing Small UIs Driven by Large Finger

The ideal target sizes on small UIs

The posture patterns and the touch zones

The nav icon – basic guidelines to consider for RWD

The navigation patterns for RWD

Summary

6. Working with Images and Videos in Responsive Web Design

Tips for reducing the file size in images for RWD

Third-party image resizing services

The

Replacing 1x images with 2x images on the fly with Retina.js

Making videos responsive

The Vector Formats

Summary

7. Meaningful Typography for Responsive Web Design

Pixels, ems, or rems for typography?

Calculating relative font sizes

Creating a Modular Scale for a harmonious typography

Using the Modular Scale for typography

Web fonts and how they affect RWD

Sass mixin for implementing web fonts

Using FlowType.js for increased legibility

Summary

8. Responsive E-mails

Why do we need to worry about responsive e-mails?

Don't overlook your analytics

Recommendations for building better responsive e-mails

Responsive e-mail build

Third-party services

Summary

Index

Conventions

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, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "The sizes attribute can also be used with the <picture> element, but we're going to focus on using the sizes attribute with the <img> tag."

A block of code is set as follows:

*, *:before, *:after {
    box-sizing: border-box;
}

//Moble-first Media Queries Mixin
@mixin forLargeScreens($width) {
    @media (min-width: $width/16+em) { @content }
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

*, *:before, *:after {
    box-sizing: border-box;
}

//Moble-first Media Queries Mixin
@mixin forLargeScreens($width) {
    @media (min-width: $width/16+em) { @content }
}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

gem install sass

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".