The Uncertain Web

Chapter 4. Selecting Responsive Design or Another Mobile Experience

The control which designers know in the print medium, and often desire in the web medium, is simply a function of the limitation of the printed page. We should embrace the fact that the web doesn’t have the same constraints, and design for this flexibility. But first, we must accept the ebb and flow of things.

— John Allsopp

One of the places where embracing uncertainty matters most and is most readily apparent to developers and designers is deciding how to handle the full depth of devices and screen resolutions out there. Users expect to be able get to your content and data with any device they’ve got in their hands. How you satisfy that multiscreen requirement is a major question facing any project these days. Balancing the desire for beautiful designs, world-class usability, top performance, and the maintainability of your platform are all factors that are going to come into play.

I stole the above quote. Well, I didn’t steal it so much as copy its use as the lead-in to some writing about responsive web design (RWD). It’s a few sentences that capture the very heart of the Web that I want—a flexible, universal medium. That sort of thinking embraces the Web in ways that I completely endorse. It’s also 14 years old.

So, where did I crib it from? It’s the quote that introduces the article that introduced RWD to the world.

That article appeared on May 25, 2010, when Ethan Marcotte published the directly named “Responsive ...