Book Image

RESS Essentials

Book Image

RESS Essentials

Overview of this book

RESS is a new methodology in the world of web design and development. It attempts to solve the problems that accompany the RWD (responsive web design) approach to web design. RESS is still in its infancy, but it is growing at an exponential rate. RESS Essentials shows you how to make server-side applications smarter and more aware of a visitor's environment limitations (device, screen size, and browser). This allows you to create faster and more reliable websites. Through this book, you will build a solid base of knowledge on RESS-related technologies, while the step-by-step tutorials will help you to create your own RESS system. This book is an introduction to RESS alchemy and gives you an incentive to build your own RESS lab. It will give you a broad overview of the multiple techniques used to code responsive websites in responsible ways. Beginning with an overview of RWD, you will learn the steps involved in setting up RWD for client-side development. You will then learn how to scale images using client- and server-side technology. By the end of this book, you will have learned about the implementation of RESS application patterns, browser feature detection, and various RESS architectures. RESS Essentials will also teach you how to use jQuery with some RWD design patterns and how to employ REST API for RWD pages.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
RESS Essentials
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Server Side – using one of our example RESS systems


We will build a responsive image solution of our own, based on one of the samples created in Chapter 4, Sample RESS Page. The solution has the following aims:

  • It should be able to serve images for any defined screen range.

  • It should work with any image file format including transparent PNG.

  • It allows for automated resizing with the possibility of manual override. The automated creation of images for smaller screen widths is a great feature, and indispensable in some workflows—like galleries with many images. On the other hand, in RWD layouts, it is better to optimize images for each resolution manually sometimes. This allows us to change proportions and focus our attention on an important part of the image, when we have limited screen real estate. Sometimes there should be different images for small screens, especially when there is text—banners and ads may be a good example.

Each of those aims has its advantages and disadvantages. We are now...