![]() This approach to designing for the web is called progressive enhancement and it’s the number one tool for dealing with the one-two punch of older browsers and device proliferation. Heck, we can even take over the entire page and convert it into a single page app.īut we should never sacrifice the functional core. We’ll hijack forms and links to lazy load additional content or otherwise avoid full-page refreshes. We’ll use JavaScript to give real-time feedback to our users. We should start from the narrowest screen size we can imagine and let the content guide our breakpoint decisions. We can use CSS to add visual hierarchy to the page, provide some visual interest, and adjust the layout to create a good reading experience on a wide range of screen sizes. Then we can look for opportunities to enhance the experience, all while keeping that functional core at the center of the experience. This is our minimum viable product and it will work anywhere. Typically we’re talking text, some basic HTML, actual links to other pages, and forms that submit to a back-end of some sort. 2.What is the simplest way to realize that purpose?.1.What is the purpose of this page, this form, this interface?.We need to ask ourselves two simple questions: When dealing with the insane proliferation of web-enabled devices and the great unknown of where our websites will go, it pays to take a step back and focus on what’s important. Wha?! We can have our cake and eat it too? Yes. We can build websites that are both nimble enough to work on low powered devices over slow networks and smart enough to take advantage of advanced features and sensors when opportunity knocks. There sure is: Instead of getting hung up on creating one experience that needs to be nearly identical on every browser, we can be smarter about how we build things and treat experience as a continuum. Testing can be tedious, time consuming, and costly. We need to thoroughly test because we can’t make any assumptions about the browsers and devices being used to access our content. And don’t even think of trying to test on that many devices.Īnd yet, here we are designing websites that can (and will) go anywhere. You can’t design for 200 different screens, let alone 1,000. That last stat blows my mind every time I read it. By 2014, however, they were seeing 1,000 unique screen resolutions each and every quarter (with over 200 of those recording 10+ visits per quarter). In 2008, they detected 71 different screen resolutions, which is already a lot to consider.In 2014, that number had skyrocketed to 14.4%. In 2008, visits from “mobile” devices accounted for only about 0.1% of their traffic. ![]() In two days!Īs further evidence, consider the enlightening details of this post from Jason Samuels of the National Council on Family relations, a non-profit organization: I worked on one project where the client provided me with a spreadsheet detailing 1,400 different user agents that accessed the login screen for the m-dot site. It seems like every other day the public is granted some new means of accessing the web. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible. This is a program that will certainly be implemented into the daily routine.This article is part of a web dev series from Microsoft. You can find Ghostlab at and get a more detailed look at it. ![]() This made for a very exciting moment in the QA Department. This enables you to view a website in any number of browsers/devices by only typing each URL once. ![]() The application creates a new URL that you can use in any browser, mobile included, and any move you make on the website in one of those browsers will affect every other browser in real time. We evaluated Adobe Edge Inspect and other tools, but ultimately decided Ghostlab was the best tool for the job. Our team needed an effective and efficient way to examine every supported platform. The time it takes to complete tasks such as inputting URLs and checking visuals only expands with the number of devices and browsers we support. When it comes to testing a website, specifically manual cross-browser testing, mundane tasks can slow you down. Save time by testing on several browsers at once with Ghostlab. ![]()
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