Mobile First Made Responsive Web Design More Meaningful

The mobile first approach is the new fundamental unit of web design. Developed over half a decade of observation, contemplation, experimentation and drawing conclusion. It seconds the idea of the rise of mobile phone users hence a rise in mobile internet has to be catered at some point otherwise the desktop and mobile websites would go obsolete in the near future. It has totally changed the way a website looks or is designed.

A decade ago we saw a boom in the mobile phone technology, it was the advent of smartphones. They were becoming popular and prevalent and websites were being made especially for mobile phones. This revolutionized the web industry into a whole new genre and suddenly the accessibility of a smart phone user increased tremendously. The rise in smartphones can also be attributed to rise of mobile websites and vice-versa.

For past few years we have seen a epochal decline in the mobile websites. The question is what happened in the in the later half of the decade?

Responsive Web Design happened.

On May 2010 Ethan Marcotte coined this term to change our and everyone's worldview about websites and other devices on an article on A List Apart. This marked the birth of of mobile first idea.

Everything you need to know

• Responsive Web Designs were necessary because the world was moving out of the desktop.
• New type of devices with various screen sizes like i pads and tabs were being launched so something was required to run websites in all platforms.
• After the concept of Responsive Web Design (RWD) the idea of mobile first approach was developed.
• This came from the already existent idea of progressive enhancement earlier used to write the code of website for various browsers.
• Stemming out from progressive enhancement mobile first approach states to build a code, a design and content for mobile first then slowly build upon it for rest of the devices.
• The sheer brilliance of this idea also compliments the concept of responsive web design.
• The most suited web design, layout and content is sought and coded into a responsive website which will impart all the necessary information to mobile users including all the necessary functions that a desktop user have access to.
• This gave power to the smartphone users and laid down the foundation of a perfect website for other platforms as well.
• RWD proves to be hell of a costly affair but mobile first significantly brought down the cost of building a website.
• Apart from cost effective solutions it reduced the wastage of code created usually moving down the hierarchy.
• Not to mention the amount of time this approach saved for web designers and their employers.

Overall there is overwhelming response of the web design community in the favor of this approach and unless you are on a very strict budget with a very specific need you will definitely end up using this as an ideal tool for your website.

Give Your Website The Best Foundation

To those of you who have read the FoundationSeries by Issac Assimov will find it easy to relate to the idea behind the popular CSS Framework by ZURB, Foundation. It was a path breaking creation in the field of open-source responsive frameworks. In Assimov's Foundation, the protagonist HariSeldon predicts the fall of Galactic Empire and start of a new era likewise ZURB recognized the fall of traditional frameworks and the need of a responsive CSS Framework. Thus became the pioneer of open source responsive frameworks.

Up with the new product Foundation5 which as claimed by ZURB is their fastest and easiest version of the same CSS Framework. The claim of being the most advanced responsive framework doesn't seem far-fetched when you look at its various features. I mean the developers have honestly put their heart and soul into Foundation5 to make it as future friendly as possible. Take a peep inside the new version and learn the truth yourself :-

• Built well optimized, aesthetic and faster web pages, inserting animation is not a problem after-all.
• The Sassy CSS or SCSS is simply SASS built with CSS attributes. It allows more flexible, dynamic and user friendly styling of the web page.
• The code is simple and clean, and the new medium grid and custom semantic breakpoints allow to code for any device swiftly.
• New and improved documentation to help you understand it easily and the "getting started" guide will do the rest, if not, you have the community forums.
• Well, the new Foundation 5 boasts new features and add-ons to make the front-end development easier and fun, but how?
  • Interchange : It lets you load different part of websites in correspondence to the media queries or the device in question. Simply, the same content will load differently for different grid size.
  • Off-canvas: Makes the menu pattern easier to code. It is usually out of the viewport and comes in smoothly when clicked or the cursor is placed.
  • Forms : Create forms even more versatile and flexible. In Foundation 5 Forms are built with the default elements as well as with the grid settings.
  • Magellan: With Magellan sticky nav tool have a website with seamless navigation as it allows you to navigate anywhere irrespective of how much one scrolls.
  • Clearing : Creation of lightbox is easier than ever as this custom plugin allows you to take an image of any size and make your own responsive lightbox.
  • Split Buttons : The introduction of new dropdown buttons plugin has greatly improved the split buttons as it gives you loads of new choices.
  • Typography : As a matter of fact Foundation 5 has come up with promising typographical schemes both beautiful as well as simple. They are bound to enchant you.
  • Dropdowns : This is another mentionable feat of this CSS Framework. It created a universal dropdown plugin for any kind of element be it simple dropdowns or popups.
• Wait, apart from them it contains a whole array of new classier templates to give you a head start in your work.
• Foundation is based on a totally new Sass processor, Libsass which is way faster than your conventional per-processors.
• If all this still boggles your mind then Zurb offers an online as well as on-site training program on Foundation by the very people who made it.

So much data, features, code and design compiled in one responsive CSS framework for your benefit, indeed Foundation5 feels worth every penny, Oh wait! They don't charge for it.

Change The Way You Framework

If your website has gone all grumpy and refuses to run well on other devices it is time to think about a serious change. There is no use to chant the same mantra about the necessity of responsive web design you know it is important. What your concern right now should be, is to find a responsive front-end CSS Framework to make your website a delight to see and browse.

CSS Framework

What better way to make your website responsive than to install Twitter Bootstrap (now version3.3.1 released). It is trusted, widely used and arguably the best CSS Framework present in the web as evident on GitHub where it is the most starred development project continuously since February 2012. Their reach is from NASA to msnbc who have used it as their choice of front-end CSS Framework so has nearly 4 million other websites( according to BuiltWith) worldwide built on Bootstrap. Built as a way to remove the non-uniformity within the various libraries used to develop an interface, Mark Otto and Jacob Thornton of Twitter developed a worldwide web phenomenon which they released as open source on August 2010. Though, it became a responsive framework in the version 2.0.

A brief overview

• A responsive framework integrating CSS and JS to build mobile friendly websites on internet.
• Bootstrap uses both LESS and SASS preprocessors for its source code.
• Answers all the needs of a web developer, build websites of any device from a smartphone to desktop.
• Reliable documentation, large community support to help you out with impressive jQuery plugins.

Yes, it is as good as it says

If you take a deeper look inside reveals this front-end CSS Framework as more than an outward charm. We've peeled layer after layer to bring out what is the best of this responsive framework.

• Mobile First : With Bootstrap 3.0 mobile first approach has been incorporated in the spirit of this CSS Framework. There is no separate file that contains mobile friendly styles rather it is now existent everywhere in the library.
• Glyphs : Bootstrap brings you a wide rage of glyphs from Glyphicon Halflings set, made available free of cost specifically for Bootstrap by Glyphicon.
• Dropdowns : It offers various functions- alignment, headers and disable menu items and adds a variety in your drop down menu, making it dynamic with dropdown JavaScript plugin.
• Button groups : Add diversity to the way you add buttons to your website. From their sizing, nesting them or making a toolbar do more with the buttons plugin.
• Navs and Navbar : Bootstrap has various navigation solutions like tabs, pills to make website more seamless. Available navs have shared codes with base .nav class and to compliment them it has responsive toggle-able navigation headers or navbar. It molds according to the viewport size.
• Breadcrumbs : Have smooth navigation and create a pecking order in the websites. Breadcrumbs feature comes to the rescue to save your time and effort.
• Pagination : Add more content and create a stack of data on a particular topic in various pages via pagination.
• Jumbotron : Helps you to outline the important content of your website by selectively changing (usually extend) the viewport size and attract viewers.
• Thumbnails : Add another dimension to the grid system of Bootstrap with thumbnail. Text, images, videos and various other items can be incorporated in grids.
• Progress Bars : Add the current progress of any application or action with a variety of Progress bars like striped, animated or stacked.
• List group and Panels : Customize data into lists with custom design and content or create panels with tables or list group itself.
• Responsive embed : Videos and slideshow can run smoothly on any device as it allows the browser to detect their width of the containing block. It implies to elements <object>,<video>,<iframe> and <embed>. If you want the styling to correlate with other attributes use class .embed-responsive-item.

Too much information? Even I am overwhelmed writing about its colossal features. This is exactly why you need to try this versatile and responsive CSS Framework today. It has a plugin for your every need, you'll feel as if all your thoughts have been coded into the framework.

CSS Frameworks is not that hard to understand

Web developers are often heard talking about CSS Framework and its applications. One might wonder what it is in fact? I mean web is crawling with discussions over the pros and cons of a CSS Framework and then Twitter, a social networking site launches Bootstrap which leaves you bewildered whats all the fuss?

To understand a CSS Framework one must know what a framework is. A framework can be defined as a compilation of codes arranged to make a particular job easier. It merely acts as a tool to accomplish your work likewise a CSS Framework is a pre-coded software that uses Cascading Style Sheets meant to create a web design which is in tandem with the global standards. Apart from the grid system and design oriented features many CSS Frameworks also use functions based on JavaScript.

A Framework can be divided into a Front-end CSS Framework and a Back-end Framework. To choose the correct framework one has to understand the nature of the work. Is it design oriented or is it logic oriented? Frameworks can be for varied applications such as connecting the database to the HTML page using PHP, Ruby etc.(Back-end) or making the design and layout of the web page using HTML/CSS, JS (Front-end). Due to reasons solely based on general popularity only Front-end Framework would be discussed.

Front-end CSS Framework -

Front-end CSS Frameworks are in fact functions made up of standard codes and structured files and folders(CSS, JS)

They comprise of:

• CSS grid system which allows the web developer to arrange and manage the various element of website design in a simple manner.
• A database of various styles of Typography for HTML elements.
• Browser compatibility modules and codes so your website can be easily made compatible across different web browsers.
• The standard CSS classes help the developers to invoke advance UI styling into there codes.

Since advent of responsive web designs all the upcoming frameworks are responsive in nature i.e. they offer responsive websites.

Front-end frameworks can be further classified as simple and complex frameworks where the selection process is completely personal needs depending upon the versatility required.

Simple frameworks: Simply termed as “grid systems” these offer style sheets having column system which aids the arrangement of various elements pertaining to standard design. To name a few- Mueller Grid System etc.

Complete Frameworks: A potpourri of features like icons, buttons, forms, typography and many such elements built to provide a responsive web design having HTML templates, alerts, popovers, navigation, etc. To name a few- Foundation, Boilerplate, Bootstrap, etc.

Apparently, these CSS Frameworks rule the majority of internet and now that you have learned about them don't act naïve in front of your web designer and make your requirements clear.

CSS Frameworks : First Step to a Responsive Designs

As an aware consumer one always looks for products or services which offer best possible solutions at a reasonable price. The more he/she digs the better are his/her probabilities of making the right decision at the time of a judgment call. Hence the blog, my reason to impart whatever knowledge I have gained with time, an insight helpful if you are a web designer or a curious onlooker, to help you make an informed decision.

I present you CSS Framework, a set of codes meant to ease your work and give you the best of both the worlds. Aesthetics and performance embedded with responsive web design. Unlike the myth that ready made objects lack the substance of beauty and elegance a CSS Framework offers both, a simple front-end design codes which enables the developers to imbibe them into their main program and an aesthetic appeal, as relevant in generating leads as a responsive web design.

A CSS framework in short is:-

• An intelligent set of codes to incorporate HTML, CSS and JavaScript in compliance with the standards of the industry.
• They are used by front end developers to invoke the code of the framework into their main HTML code via classes.
• Commonly known as Front-end framework it is divided into two categories- Simple frameworks and complete frameworks.
• Simple frameworks consist of grid layouts and designs whereas a complete framework contains all the tools required to make a responsive web design.
• A complete framework has many tools and widgets-
  • Typography
  • Grid Styles
  • Iconography, pagination, breadcrumbs, etc.
  • Type of forms, and styling tools.
  • Generate equal height with equalizer
  • GUI widgets, video or sideshow, modal dialogs, tabs, etc.
• SASS or Syntactically Awesome Style-sheets and LESS are used by complete frameworks.

Granted, a CSS Framework is not the absolute authority on beautiful and sturdy websites with crisp code and high performance. One may argue when a back end programer can make a complete website out of scratch with all the above qualities then what is the relevance of CSS Framework over conventional Back-end programming?

• Lets me put it like this, "If you wanna go hunting, there is no reason to make a spear."
• If you do think about the necessity to make a unique spear for yourself mind you, this hunting trip is gonna cost you more than your camp gear and boots.
• Okay, too much metaphors. It is cost effective to a large degree and the output is simply impressive.
• Responsive web design made easy.
• The code is well arranged and simple.
• Cross browser comparability.
• Saves a lot of time for both the designer and the customer.

Responsive Web Design is the need of the hour, I believe on this we all are on the same page . Having established the versatility of CSS Frameworks, let me offer you an insight on the best possible responsive frameworks available today.

• Bootstrap: There is no such list of CSS framework around which does not talk about this versatile invention by Twitter.
• HTML5 Boilerplate: An HTML5 framework that provides a solid ground to build your website and the ability to combine it with other frameworks.
• Toast: It is literally a toast to simplicity be it responsive grids and box sizing the complete process feels like playing with a toy.
• Gumby: Another soldier in the unit of responsive frameworks. With Gumby 2.6 build your websites with ease and agility.
• Yaml: Build on SASS, Yaml is another marvel in the field of CSS Frameworks that make a responsive web design feel like another trivial code.
• Foundation: No list can be complete with this product of Zurb built with SASS preprocessor is one of the most advanced responsive framework that present today.

Believe me, you will fall in love with your website once it is completed. One of the most satisfactory feeling in this world is to see the outcome of your own blood and sweat built into a beautiful and responsive website.