Thoughts

JavaScript headaches with responsive layouts

It’s always nice to start another responsive project, each a little more daring than the last. I’m still in the infant stages with these projects as I find that I’m lacking some good tools to make the process easier. I’ve created a a simple responsive device browser which simply gives an at a glance impression of how a responsive site will look at the various screen widths.

I’m finding one of the biggest challenges is catering for the user to be able to resize the browser window once it has been loaded. One may think that this isn’t likely to happen very often. Especially not to the extent where it starts off less than 480 and increases to above 768. This is exactly what happened on my last project where someone’s browser settings opened certain links in a new window which happened to be tiny. They then realised they wanted it larger and maximised the window to find that most of the functionality hadn’t been initialised because the JavaScript turned on only the small touch device functionality on load.

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Simplify, Modularise, Simplify

Bandwagons come and go, when looking back there are so many which fall in to the category “forget/can’t believe I jumped on” but with the rise of require js and other module loaders using the commonjs Asynchronous Module Definition I think this is one bandwagon everyone should be considering seriously.

In my position at the digital agency I work for, I’ve been considering the ever widening landscape of client expectations from new forms of UX on devices, locations and interactions within social circles. More and more is being requested and without modularising these features in to well tested silos the time needed to satisfy clients hunger could potentially sky rocket.

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