Book Image

Mastering Responsive Web Design

By : Ricardo Zea
Book Image

Mastering Responsive Web Design

By: Ricardo Zea

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.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Mastering Responsive Web Design
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgment
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 3. Mobile-first or Desktop-first?

In my years of experience designing and building responsive websites, I've found that in order to have a better view of the content and the messages, it's easier to visualize things with a desktop-first approach during the wireframe and design phases.

As we are able to see more content in a given layout with a desktop-first approach, it allows us to translate the hierarchy of the content that was provided to us into a layout that represents said hierarchy. Doing this in a small canvas of 320 pixel width is more difficult than it needs to be.

When you accomplish that hierarchy, it will remain the same on small-screen devices, and the only thing that changes is the layout.

Best practices recommend building mobile-first, but many web professionals don't really know why we build mobile-first in the first place. Pun intended.

So, let's clear it up. The reason we build mobile-first is because of three principles mentioned by Luke Wroblewski, the author who...