CHAPTER 5 Robust, Responsible, Responsive Web Design
Oakley recently launched a responsive website with an 85 MB index
page^1 , complete with an up-front loading screen. The landing pages for the
primary navigation items on time.com are in the ballpark of 3MB each.
I’m glad to see so many people growing uneasy about potential bandwidth
issues with responsive websites, but we have to be careful about where
we direct our blame: we can’t hold responsive Web design responsible for
mistakes that we’ve been making.Our Faulty Hammers
In another life, years and years ago, I was a carpenter. As I was just
starting out, I worked with two guys who had both been at it for more
than twenty years apiece. Like so many bloggers, I too had concerns about
the tools we were using — concerns the other guys didn’t seem to have,
oddly enough. All of their dented and scarred equipment was brand new to
me: heavy, awkward, impossible to manage. The hammer I was given, in
particular. I was certain that it was defective, weighing as much as it did.
Now, as simple a device as it is, a hammer allows a skilled craftsman
to do an unbelievable amount of work: framing an entire house, shingling
a roof, building furniture, and — of course — opening beer bottles. When
I was holding mine, though, it was only good for hitting my thumbs,
leaving holes in walls, and sending nails careening off a roof and onto a
homeowner’s brand new car. Opening beer bottles it could do well enough,
as I discovered soon after the chipped Lexus incident.
Our early forays into responsive Web design aren’t much different
from my early days of carpentry. RWD is a simple tool and it’s brand
new to us, though the techniques that it encompasses — a percentage-
based grid, media queries and flexible media — aren’t particularly new
themselves. In the right hands, it can accomplish something incredible: a
layout that seems as though it were tailor-made to suit any display on any
device, including the ones we can’t predict. Granted, we can make mistakes1 http://moto.oakley.com/