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Im new to converting from photoshop to CSS, hopefully someone could help me.
I have many layers in photoshop and I need to convert them to CSS. Many layers include images which are around 2500px width.
I am using bootstrap so naturally my website is responsive. Now should I leave the width of 2500px and add a 'img-responsive' class? It seems to work (the class scales down the image), however the image size is still massive and it takes ages to load. Should I decrease the width and height of those images? Would that impact user interface on bigger screens?
Thank you!
The procedure is to build a website that fits the design.
Do not simply take a PSD layer, dump it to a giant image, and put it on your page. Interpret the design and decide how your page should be built. You need to make decisions about what should size dynamically and what should stay static. It's up to you to figure out what works best, based on the design and your skills.
If you want your images to be fluid (responsive is not so relevant here), you can set a width to your images, but keep your height to auto; they will resize to that width. So:
img{width:100%; height:auto /*default*/; max-width:2500px;}
See here: jsfiddle
You have a number of questions, so I will answer them in list format:
Q: "Should I leave the width of 2500px..."
A: Bootstrap current version 3.2 has a max container width of 1170px, so I'm not sure why you have images at 2500px unless they are backgrounds or something similar. You should size your images to fit the layout of the largest desktop size you are supporting.
Q: After scaling the img down with a CSS class the size is massive... "Should I decrease the w & h of those images?"
A: Scale images to fit largest desktop layout, then in Photoshop use "Save for web" to properly compress image size. For JPGs I typically use a quality of 65. If it is a bg img, you can get away with using a lesser quality setting (40-50), just play with it.
Q: "Would that impact user interface on bigger screens?"
A: Yes, it would negatively impact bigger screens. If, for instance, you saved your full-width header image at 768px to accommodate tablets, it would look pixelated (blurry) on a desktop.
Pertaining to images there are several ways so you don't load large images for small devices, here's two.
Use server side detection, like https://github.com/serbanghita/Mobile-Detect/ or http://adaptive-images.com/ and deliver appropriately sized images. The latter does much of the work for you. Both are php, there are probably forks for other languages.
Then, even with this, IMO best solution, you'd use a class that sizes the images fluidly, such as "img-responsive" or your own making to make it fluid.
Use mobile first css and use background images, you'd use percentages or vh (or combine for fallbacks) on the container and use background-size:cover and then start smallest to largest with media queries. Make the images 600px, 1000px, 1600px, and 2500px or whatever and then make min-width media queries to load up background images. Use Modernizr to create a fallback for browsers that can't understand background-size css (if you are supporting IE8 or other legacy browsers).
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I just learned about responsive design. My question is what steps does a HTML designer has to do to make a design responsive?
It appears that a responsive design is all about using #media queries and controlling the flow of elements on the page if it gets resized by setting max-width, min-width and manipulating floating, margins and padding depending on browser window's size.
Is there anything else besides #media query that needs to be done for responsive design?
Responsive Images (different images in HTML for different situations) is an important one.
Few important bits :
Use of srcset attribute for switching between different versions of the same image.
http://responsiveimages.org is a well of resources on this subject.
Use of automation tools for imaging - One of my favorites is Grunt and here is a nice read about it: http://addyosmani.com/blog/generate-multi-resolution-images-for-srcset-with-grunt/
It really makes a lot of difference when user on mobile opens a page with images that are sized for it, less data and well faster loads :)
Tools like Grunt may seem like they take some work to setup but once you start working with it its so easy and fast.
More reading material:
https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/optimizing-content-efficiency/image-optimization
http://blog.cloudfour.com/responsive-hero-images/
Absolutely. There are three main tenants of responsive web design from Ethan Marcotte's original book, Responsive Web Design (abookapart.com/products/responsive-web-design). They are:
1 - Fluid Grids - percentage based widths instead of pixels for your layout/grid. This is arguably even more important than the media query as it allows websites to be fluid and not fixed. So smart phones and tablets come in too many sizes to count, so having a fluid layout makes sure your design can fit nicely at different device widths.
2 - Flexible images - which are basically images that shrink when the browser get smaller. There are plenty of challenges around images in the context of responsive, which is why #Ivan86 smartly recommended using the srcset attribute on the image tag, which I also highly recommend but also maybe wait on that until you're comfortable with the basics. Since you're just starting out, let's keep it simple with 'flexible images' which are images that are set to max-width: 100% with a parent container around them that is % based. This allows the image to shrink as the parent container (div, figure, etc) gets smaller. However, if you do happen to be interested in srcset I posted two articles on this recently: www.richfinelli.com/srcset-part-1, http://www.richfinelli.com/srcset-part-2/ which explain how to use this new attribute.
3 - Media queries - as you said, are used in your css to change the layout based on available browser width.
As I think you're finding out, once you get in to responsive web design you realize there's multiple layers of challenges you can find yourself in. But I recommend buying Ethan Marcotte's book from abookapart.com to get a good jump on it. Very short and actually funny.
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When building mobile application for Android or iOS we must provide images for several resolutions (mdpi, hdpi, xhdpi..2x, 3x..etc), beacuse mobile devices do have different resolutions...
Why we don't have to do the same task when building responsive web site (provide images for different resolutions) ?
A solution to do this has been proposed some time ago now, as it is a totally relevant use-case.
The answer to your question about "why we don't have to do this" would be, "we do have to do this", as pixel density differs on bigger screens too and especially for responsive pages, there is need to provide different pictures (not just different resolutions) that fit the content better (commonly referred to as art direction based selection).
This is why the <picture> - element (link to w3c HTML spec) exists and has added support for various attributes like media-queries, multiple sources and srcsets for different screen densities, as we use them on mobile pages.
Additionally, srcset and sizes - attributes exist for the <img>-tag as well.
This page (usecases.responsiveimages.org) describes the different use-cases for this.
The "right" approach will always depend on what you want to achieve, but at least offering different resolutions for varying pixel-ratios should be a standard in my opinion.
So these elements and attributes give you tools to select your image based on
device-pixel - ratio
viewport
context (completely different pictures, not just resolution)
image-format
and you should make use of these tools, no matter what device you're targeting.
Note that the browser support for the picture-element is getting better and better, but is not complete now (at the time of this writing, only Chrome and Opera have it fully implemented when it comes to Desktop - Browsers, Firefox has it implemented but still locked behind a flag, this should change with FF 38). There is a fairly well working polyfill though (https://github.com/scottjehl/picturefill)
tl;dr We really should do this, no matter what device and modern browsers give us very competent tools for doing so.
Why we don't have to do the same task when building responsive web site (provide images for different resolutions) ?
Actually we do, its called retina ready design.
Here three things are to be understood.
1. Pixel density
Pixel density is the number of pixels a display can fit into a fixed distance. This is most of the time measured is PPI (Pixel Per Inch)
2. Resolution
Resolution is a simple count of the number of pixels across the entire width and height of a device.
Now, to further explain this concept, lets take an example of two tablets of same dimensions, say 7 inch tablets, both are physically identical in width and height.
Now at a glance these both tablets may seem quite identical, but first one (Tab-A) has a resolution of 320 x 480 while other one (Tab-B) has a resolution of 640 x 960. So These directly affect the PPI.
What this means is that the Tab-B is cramming (displaying) more (double) no of pixels in the same physical dimensions, effectively increasing the PPI.
So if we choose an icon of say 150 x 150px and display it on both the devices, the same icon on Tab-B shall(should) be half the size of the same icon displayed on Tab-A. With this, the user of the Tab-B shall have double the content of what the user of Tab-A has.
This may sound good, but we must remember that the user of Tab-B has everything half the size of what the logo was originally intended to be, so now he has to exert his eyes more, in order to figure out what that logo is about. But thats not the case.
Here enters the Third concept.
3. Viewport
In my own view/understanding (for lack of official def), A viewport is the virtual resolution that your browser renders, irrespective of the native device resolution. This is supposed to solve the problem of "too high resolution making objects too small".
What this does is that, it renders the logo(and every other thing) on Tab-B the same physical size as Tab-A, effectively stretching the graphics.
Now if the graphics were vector then they would scale seamlessly, but if they are images, then they create a shabby/jagged edges making the images look bad.
This is where you need images 2x the resolution.
So, Coming back to your problem, The difference between the viewport of a normal desktop and its native resolution isn't much.
You should not post the question with a (false) answer included:
We don't have to, but we should create and use images with higher resolutions for all devices that may have pixel ratio>1 because it is not rare that those devices display images using much more pixels than it supposed to. Even if the pixel ratio is 1, all browsers have a zoom feature, which also requires high(er) resolution images.
This means that simple image that we define as:
<img src="myimage.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 100px;" />
may be displayed at 400x200 px or more. Check some common device pixel ratios.
Therefor all the images used should be at least 2x width, 2x display height (which means 4x larger). If possible, for vector images we should use SVG or icon fonts.
We can also target devices by pixel density using CSS media-queries (short article here. Personally, I do not care that much, serving few Kb or Mb more is nothing to current internet speeds (and will mean nothing in years to come).
Im looking for some options regarding scaling some HTML elements for use on a large screen (like a kiosk). I'm currently using CSS3 scale() to get a relatively cross-browser scale (thanks to cssplease), but seeing if anyone else has any better suggestion.
Primarily, I'm looking at rendering widgets (HTML, js, and images) on a large scale (from 400x200px to 800x500 for example). While I could rewrite each widget for a larger scale, I thought I'd check my options.
Is there something that SVG can do, or canvas? CSS3 scale() is okay, but images need to be replaced with high-res versions. Text spacing seems to also be slightly off.
Thanks!
CSS3 Transforms are still the best option for what I want, especially for browser performance.
Not sure if Understood you right, but if you need your website, images, videos etc to look good on any screen (with any resolution) you could try to go for responsive design. You have option of using css media queries to adjust website for different screen resolutions, it will also maintain original image quality etc.
http://webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/responsive-design-in-3-steps
http://webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/responsive-design-with-css3-media-queries
http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2012/03/22/device-agnostic-approach-to-responsive-web-design/
I found them very help full and once you get into it you would easily build scalable websites ;))
This may be an extensive retrofit but you might be able to define your elements' dimensions using ems then use media queries to increase the base font size for different screen sizes. So if your base font size is 16px, you main column might be 47em, sidebar 12em, for an approximate site width of 1000px. You could then use media queries to detect a larger browser and all you need to do is increase the base font size to 20px and viola your site is now 25% bigger.
I am creating a website and would like to get the opinion of some of the more experienced web developers.
How does one create a website where the element style attributes (padding, margin, height, width, etc) are appropriate for the users screen resolution?
With CSS i get to choose one value and that is the final value which will be displayed for all users, regardless of their browsing resolution.
For example, say i would like an image to be displayed 10% to the left of its container i would do the following: padding-left: 15%; Now, that may work fine for some resolutions but for others i may need that value to be higher.
What do more experienced web developers do in regards to screen resolution differences?
It sounds like your goal is to have your layout look literally the same at any resolution, which isn't really practical. Remember that images scale poorly! What most designers do is use percentages where possible to allow the layout to "flow" to fit most resolutions while remaining attractive.
If you analyze (for example) Stack Overflow. you'll see that it is a fixed-width set that is itself centered in the browser. Apple does the same thing, with some art elements that are displayed gracefully at any window width. It's an artistic problem, and I'm not sure the answer can be given with any more clarity than that.
It depends entirely on your design goals.
Most designers use fixed-width areas and let it center on the screen.
In some cases you can use CSS media-queries to apply specific rules to different types and sizes of screens (browser support is limited).
You can use min/max-width to handle many cases of content growing too large or small - but there is no equivalent for margins.
SVG graphics can be used to provide scalable images that look good at any resolution.
Some companies provide an entirely separate site for mobile users.
There are other tips and tricks but in general most designers avoid these issues by using fixed-width layouts - even though that's not always ideal.
I usually define those styles in em units, which are relative to the font size. So, increasing the text size increases padding & margins proportionately.
I try to create a variable width website, but i have a problem with the images. I want to site to have bigger images and fonts on wider monitors, and smaller for normal ones. The solution i thought about was using percent, but the images (For the buttons, background and header) look kind of bad when they are resized. Is there another solution for resizing images and content dependeing on browser width?
Thank you
First thing to do is to check whether you really need those images. I haven'y seen them, so I assume you need them badly.
But you don't actually need any javascript to do that.
Depending on the audience you're targetting and the time you've got to build your website, you can try this to use CSS media queries to determine the width of the user's display. (You can learn more here: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/)
You can check the target display resolution with simple CSS conditional statements. If you know what kind of display types are the most popular among your prospective guests, you can prepare 3-4 different sets of various sized images for various users.
This way you can deliver different sizes of images to different user resolutions.
But first make 100% you need the images and you cand achieve the same effect with CSS.
You probably need a mixture of JavaScript and CSS; use JavaScript to determine the dimension of the screen, and use it to calculate the ratio for your re-sizing, and change the CSS property of the objects.
You may also want to use sizes in em instead of pixels when doing the style sheets.
When resizing images, you also have to keep in mind the aspect ratio, so you cannot just apply a percentage value to both the width and height.