It’s the beginning of a new year, which makes it an apt time to talk about resolutions. But I’m not really a resolutions kind of person. Instead of resolutions, I prefer goals, specifically work goals. (And by “prefer”, I mean that it’s something I’ve finally started purposefully thinking about in the past couple of years.) I often get asked about what kinds of things developers should learn, so a good portion of this newsletter will be goals you could set towards that end. You’ll also find links to my 2013 goals, and a recap of how well my 2012 resolutions, er, goals, were met.
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Jared M. Spool, a renown UI and UX expert, just posted a great article titled “Devising a Strategy for Responsive Design”. In the article, Mr. Spool covers the current issues surrounding designing web sites responsibly (and responsively) for today’s environment, devices, and destinations. Not only does Mr. Spool talk about just the technologies involved, he also explains how some of these issues have further implications on other aspects of a site, such as content management. It’s a sufficiently thorough and well-explained article that’s definitely worth your time if you want to get up to speed on the issues surrounding web design today.
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Screenqueri.es is a relatively new site, currently in beta, for testing how a Web site will look on various mobile devices. It’s an absolute snap to use: just enter the URL of your (or any) site, and Screenqueri.es will load a preview of that site, on a grid of pixels, as it would be loaded by a mobile device.
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The Treehouse Blog published a good introduction to responsive Web design a couple months back, titled Beginner’s Guide to Responsive Web Design. If you’re not yet familiar with the concept of responsive Web design, this is an excellent introduction, providing both the how’s and the why’s.
A few months ago I began using jQuery Mobile for a couple of Web projects. If you’re not familiar with it, jQuery Mobile uses CSS and JavaScript to make an HTML5-based site look and act much like an iOS app. No native programming required; nothing for the user to download and install. It’s a pretty amazing little package, which is not unexpected given how great jQuery is. If you’re curious to learn jQuery Mobile, check out this excellent tutorial written by C. Enrique Ortiz and posted at IBM’s developerWorks.
The only thing I’ll add, which is not mentioned in the article, is that jQuery Mobile is a logical choice in situations where you’re making a mobile version of your Web site that’s separate from the main version (and, presumably, redirecting mobile clients to it). Whether or not that’s a good policy is of much debate these days.
