How does one go about creating a fully responsive site (ie. 'fluid') that doesn't end up displaying the narrow "mobile" version on a tablet? (Usually the mobile version of a website is designed with thumbs in mind. It's very basic, usually single column, and isn't really suited to larger mobile devices like tablets.)
Even if you've designed everything to scale gracefully to every width, you still need the viewport setting to tell a user's phone to display the content at the right width... but this setting appears to also be honoured by tablets, too.
I realise you can use a detection solution (like Mobile Detect) but then it's not really fully fluid (although I suppose you could use Mobile Detect to insert a viewport meta tag if a mobile phone is detected). Is there a better way to get tablets to display the desktop version?
I feel like I'm missing a very obvious trick!
How it should work when adopted into the CSS standards:
Use #media queries in CSS, along with the #viewport CSS tag, instead of the meta viewport tag. There's a good explanation of how to do this here:
http://www.html5hacks.com/blog/2012/11/28/elegantly-resize-your-page-with-the-at-viewport-css-declaration/
An example from the above link:
#media (max-width: 699px) and (min-width: 520px) {
#viewport {
width: 640px;
}
}
You could use this to set different viewports on narrower and wider devices.
But for now, seems JavaScript is the only way to do it:
You can listen to the onResize event and check the width of the screen, and then adjust the viewport meta tag in the DOM accordingly.
See http://www.webdevdoor.com/responsive-web-design/change-viewport-meta-tag-javascript
Use media queries for different sized screens, ie: small(phones), medium(tablets), and desktop versions. You will only change the content thay needs changed in the queries. Then also set a meta tag with the viewport set at 1.0. Search around for media queries, there's a lot of information of there. Good luck!
Related
http://stackoverflow.com does this, as well as www.ancestry.com. How do these sites keep from showing the mobile layout on a desktop when resizing the browser window if they don't have a separate subdomain? With my understanding, media queries will resize the website according to the viewport, but the both StackOverflow and Ancestry only resize to a certain point - on a phone the layout is completely different. Any help with this? I'd like to know how sites like the examples given achieve this.
Technically it's done by forcing a min-width on your document, which will incur horizontal scrolling below that size, with:
html {
min-width: 1000px;
}
But you should only deliver such CSS if you a have a 100% guarantee that this site will be served only to desktops. That can't be applied to mobile devices. Showing the mobile layout on desktop if a user resizes the window is perfectly normal. It naturally adapts to split screen mode situations.
I should probably make this a comment but they look at the device width, not the viewport width in their media queries and javascript. (I'm sick and don't feel like writing any more). There are also services available that can help you detect what type of device there is. However, these services can be slow and pricy sometimes. More often not worth the effort.
You can detect if your viewer is a mobile or a PC, then load different CCS files.
One way you can detect if there is a mobile is by javascript UserAgent BUT it is not very effective.
if( /Android|webOS|iPhone|iPad|iPod|BlackBerry|IEMobile|Opera Mini/i.test(navigator.userAgent) ) {
// is mobile..
}
I haven't tested this recently, but there is a 'mobile' device specifier:
#media mobile and (min-width: 400px) {
.col { width:50% }
}
#media mobile and (max-width: 400px) {
.col { width:100% }
}
That'll work on mobile devices, but not desktop
I deployed the same scenario on a WordPress site using "mobble pluging" which simply detect the device then generate a HTML version for mobile, tablet or desktop.
I want design some layout in which , has defined min-width - is it safe?
Can I use #media (max-width) to define different , min-width on different devices?
I am focusing on modern browsers Chrome, Fire Fox, Safari, Windows 8 IE - computers, tablers, smartphones (Android, iOS)?
Are you are serving a separate mobile site or styling an existing desktop version with media queries? For the former use Chrome inspector to set the user agent to emulate the most common Android phones. For the latter use max-width and/or device-pixel ratios for your displays. It is essential to get the breakpoints right for the mobile display or your layout will collapse.
See CSS tricks to get a good starting point
Dont use a min or max width on a body, just use a wrapper div around the content and a header div around the header and navigation.( if you have the navigation like a stip under the header)
I am coding HTML newsletter, I have to code one file that once sent it detects device if it's smartphone or PC. If PC it shows 600px width and for smartphones it shows 300px width.
So how should I set the width property so that it looks as per the width mentioned above.
You are looking for CSS Media Queries, here is a basic solution that may suit your needs:
/* ALL (Fallback), this will be used by browsers that don't support CSS Media Queries */
#container{width:300px;}
/* Screen more than 600px in width */
#media only screen and (min-width: 600px){
#container{width:600px;}
}
/* Screen less than 600px in width */
#media only screen and (max-width: 599px) {
#container{width:300px;}
}
More examples here: https://github.com/dhgamache/Skeleton/blob/master/stylesheets/skeleton.css#L79
It is very bad practice to use width % because if there are images within the page these will not be effected by this in most browsers. There is no proper way to code an EDM for both mobile devices and computers yet. Email clients and web services are just not up to par for this.
In my opinion, if you want to make it user friendly for both devices then you should be creating content fields similar to that if the windows 8 interface so that it will still look good on the computer and will have a decent look on a mobile device.
So lets take a look at what mobile devices support Media Queries. It is a HUGE hit and miss in this area.
Supported:
Android Mail (very buggy), Iphone mail and Ipad mail (>=320px <= 480px).
This does come with the risk of not having many elements displaying correctly still because it is relatively new still.
Not Supported
Android Gmail, Iphone Gmail, Ipad Gmail and Blackberry 8000
The only real option to go with for EDM's is to keep them static meaning you should never try and make it fluid. EDM's basically have a set amount of info in them and images then get sent so there is no need for the widths/heights to be fluid. Doing this only runs the rist of something breaking in another browser or email client.
I'm using the Semantic Grid System to build a responsive site. However, something isn't quite right with the media queries that should obviously kick in once it hits a particular screen size.
I'll reference what i mean with their example on the website : if I view this on my iPhone for example, given that it is supposed to adjust to a single column structure on a mobile device, it still throws out the web version of the page. That is true for both Safari and Chrome on my iPhone. However, if I use the RWD bookmarklet to check it's appearance at different resolutions it appears as expected for the mobile resolution. Also, ironically, if I resize the page in Safari on my desktop it also adjusts accordingly once I get down to the approriate screen size, but not in Firefox.
The media query that it uses once it hits 720px is
#media screen and (max-width: 720px) {
#maincolumn,
#sidebar {
.column(12);
margin-bottom: 1em;
}
}
and I might be wide of the mark here but I think that must be the issue. But given that this is directly from the semantic.gs website I don't think I have the expertise necessarily to question their own code.
Any idea what the problem might be?
The behavior that you describe can be the result of not using the 'viewport' meta tag in your markup:
<meta content="width=device-width" name="viewport">
http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/tutorials/htmlcss-tutorials/quick-tip-dont-forget-the-viewport-meta-tag/
I'm looking to create a mobile version of our website. What's a good way to provide the best, most fully featured version.
We have HTML5 and CSS3 Website. Is any Converting is possible?
Thanks in advance...
There are several things to consider when converting your site, what size screens and devices are you going to support - just phones or pads too? Also what is the content / functionality of your site. If it's fairly static display sort of data then you may consider "Responsive Design" (lots of links if you google it). You modify your layout to handle the screen sizes. You could use Modernizr or something like that to determine what functionality the device has and determine how to skin / handle navigation, form data, etc. I don't think you'll find anything to just "port" your site (other than paying somebody else to do it)
I'm assuming you plan on having similar content on your mobile version of your website that you do on desktop version, if so you could use media queries to configure the styling of your site to best fit various mobile screen sizes, such as:
/* Media Queries
------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
#media handheld and (max-width:480px),
screen and (max-device-width: 480px),
screen and (mx-width: 600px) {
/* then modify css for the small screen such as centering headers, setting inherit widths etc */
}