Sharon:
By now, we've all seen responsive designs that have given us endless hours of fun resizing our browsers and watching what happens. And now that you’ve seen it, you totally want it, right? But is it really what you need? While I’m a big fan of responsive design, it’s not a panacea for all the ills of the web. Here are a couple things to consider when determining whether or not responsive design is right for your site.
Dave:
A danger I am constantly battling is becoming too tied to my tools. By tools, I mean the things I use to get work done. It could be Photoshop, CSS, a CMS, pen, paper, anything I use to do my job. Why is this so dangerous? Aren’t tools there to make our lives easier? Well, they are, but we often lock in out toolset too early on projects and it ends up hurting our product in the long run.
Josh:
The modern day cut-up man/woman/shop is dead when it comes to a dynamic system. It’s sad because no obituary was written nor news alert on AP/CNN posted, but it’s true. The theory, that a company or individual needs to ‘cut-up’ the design composition into a semi-working website before full development of the backend system is highly unnecessary and inefficient. In a time where budgets are even tighter than they have been in years past and a need for continual push around efficiency in development, eliminating the process of cut-ups before development needs to die quickly.
Karen:
Phase2, Level Ten, 4Kitchens, and others come together to improve the Apps and Appserver modules this Friday.
Mike:
One of the most common challenges with multiple-site web architectures is determining the right level of interaction between the sites. In particular, one of the most common requirements is for some kind of content sharing. The problem with "content sharing" is that it is usually given as a pretty vague requirement at first. It's like a home storage problem - you could be talking about building a second floor on your house, putting up a shed in the backyard, or buying a storage bin from IKEA. Here, I'll try to distill some of the issues and get you asking the right questions when you encounter the problem of content sharing across multiple websites within a web architecture.
Karen:
In the Town of Lake Clarke Shores, Florida, citizens no longer have to wait to access valuable information about their town hall meetings, thanks to a new web site powered by OpenPublic and built by the team at Big Couch Media Group. Seeing a need for not only a site makeover but an overhaul of the tools that community members needed most, John Studdard and the Big Couch team put OpenPublic to the test, utilizing the responsive design theme and maximizing the available tools for citizen engagement, while also building new functionality for the platform. I sat down with John this week to hear more about the build.
Sharon:
Over the years I’ve watched my wireframes go from scribbles on the back of a napkin to architectural-looking blueprints complete with gradients and icons and detailed pagination mechanisms. And, truth be told, it saddens me. The spirit in which wireframes were intended, way back when we first realized that websites had to be planned out, was to get ideas for content down on paper before we started plodding away at development. They should inform, not dictate, the information architecture, content development, and visual design processes that follow.
Dave:
Last time I looked at a few example of how designing responsively affects some areas of the project process. I wanted to expand on that and actually develop these thoughts into a series that will hopefully cover those parts of the process more in -depth along with some others.
I think Content is a good place to start as it’s a) usually an early part of the process and b) one that will make a substantial impact on your project
Okay, so we’re designing responsively. How does that affect content?
Joshua:
I was going to write about making efficient use of client-generated requirements today, but there's really only one subject on my mind. I think it's entirely appropriate to devote some words to the man who, more than any other, made my job and our work possible: Steve Jobs.
Dave:
The amount of news content available on the web is staggering and overwhelming. Publishers recognize that they must differentiate themselves by producing and aggregating the most interesting and relevant content for their target audience, and packaging it in the most consumable way possible.
As a result, one of the most important aspects of developing a content strategy revolves around the degree of "curation" - when and where editors need to dictate exactly what stories are displayed.
