With iOS 7’s new Dynamics API, views can be influenced by gravity, attached to each other with springs, and bounced up against boundaries and each other. We’re used to objects in games feeling real. To get this effect, game designers use a physics engine that treats the elements as bodies in a simulation and that uses Newton’s laws of motion to calculate how they move over time. In using the engine, designers specify an object’s bounciness, its density, the level of gravity, and how things are attached to each other. In iOS 7, Apple made that technology available to UIKit-based apps as well.
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An easy way of configuring settings once and reusing them is by using some kind of tools such as INIT, which can perfectly coexist with and even be used through a generator. Keep in mind that it is intended for Web apps, so the lack of a build workflow might trouble you if you try to build a whole Web page architecture with it. Have you thought about a good workflow and about which tools provide the most convenience?
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One of the hardest problems in responsive Web design right now are responsive images. “Retina” images are especially a challenge because if you have sized your layout with ems or percentages, then you cannot be sure of the exact pixel dimensions of each image being displayed. In this article, Gavyn McKenzie will look at one solution to the problem that he implemented on his portfolio website at Etch.
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WordPress is a powerful platform for managing content, which makes it perfect for carrying out a process of ongoing conversion rate optimization. Implementing the steps that we’ll outline below would be difficult and would probably necessitate the involvement of a professional developer. But if you can handle the day-to-day running of a WordPress installation, then you won’t have much trouble following this article and implementing its suggestions.
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In this article Ronan Cremin explains how to use RESS (responsive design with server-side components) to make significant performance and reach improvements to a website for both mobile and desktop devices alike. Your website will change from one that works on desktops, tablets and smartphones to one that works on almost anything anywhere and loads faster in all cases. It’s hard to over-emphasize the importance of this, but if you need a good case study, read about what happened to YouTube when Google lightened its pages…
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The proliferation of mobile devices, increased user expectations, and the very real risks of losing customers and dropping in search result rankings have laid a heavy burden on developers to optimize loading time at all costs. The Web development community previously didn’t spend much time concerning itself with load issues and for that reason and more, Web developers aren’t conditioned to think very hard about the unique load requirements of their clients’ websites. We need to include a specification for load requirements as a regular checklist item when bidding and planning Web work.
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The debate between strongly and dynamically typed languages rages on. But understanding the issue starts with weak typing and languages such as C. The pendulum will swing back and forth many times in the coming years. The only solution is flexibility. Learn to work in each environment and you’ll work well with any team.
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In this article, Ariel Salminen is pleased to introduce Responsive Nav, a free and open-source JavaScript plugin. A solution that doesn’t require a big library and is released under the MIT License, so you can use it in all of your projects for free and without any restrictions. The solution is not one size fits all, nor is it meant to be. But for those who are looking for a solution that does one thing well, it’s definitely a good choice.
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A common question on clients and developers minds is, “How can we provide a great Web experience to our users on mobile?” In this article, Matt Stow will try to answer this question. If you can’t convince your clients to start from scratch with a mobile-first philosophy, he hopes this gives you the knowledge, impetus and tools that you need to retrofit their websites!
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In this article, Jordan Moore is going to discuss a few of the lesser practiced elements that are quietly becoming part of the responsive Web design ecosystem under the umbrella of responsible Web design, a design that has been evolving rapidly ever since Ethan Marcotte coined the term two years ago. Since then, techniques have emerged, become best practices and formed part of our ever-changing methodology.
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