If you think you need to create a "mobile" version of your website—think again! A responsive web design provides one design that looks great on smart phone, desktop, and everything in-between. It will effortlessly respond to the size of the user's screen, providing the best experience possible for both today's and tomorrow's devices.
This book provides a complete "how-to" of taking an existing fixed width design and making it responsive. Furthermore, it extends responsive design methodology by applying the latest and most useful techniques provided by HTML5 and CSS3, making the design leaner and more maintainable than ever before. It also explains common best-practice methods of writing and delivering code, images, and files.
If you can understand HTML and CSS, you can build a responsive web design.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with HTML5, CSS3, and Responsive Web Design, defines what responsive web design is, provides examples of responsive designs, and highlights the benefits and economies of using HTML5 and CSS3.
Chapter 2, Media Queries: Supporting Differing Viewports, explains what media queries are, how to write them, and how they can be applied to any design to adapt the CSS styles for a device's capabilities.
Chapter 3, Embracing Fluid Layouts, explains the benefits of a fluid layout and shows how to easily convert a current fixed-width design to a fluid layout or use a CSS framework to rapidly prototype a responsive design.
Chapter 4, HTML5 for Responsive Designs, explores the many benefits of coding with HTML5 (leaner code, semantic elements, offline caching, and WAI-ARIA for assistive technologies).
Chapter 5, CSS3: Selectors, Typography, and Color Modes, demonstrates the power of CSS3 selectors, allowing you to target and transform anything with ease. We also use CSS3 @font-face rules to create beautiful web typography and explain new CSS3 color modes such as RGB(A) and HSL(A).
Chapter 6, Stunning Aesthetics with CSS3, shows how to create text shadows, box shadows, and gradients with pure CSS3. We also cover how to add multiple background images and create icons with a font.
Chapter 7, CSS3 Transitions, Transformations, and Animations, covers how to create, animate, and transform on-screen elements with nothing more than CSS3.
Chapter 8, Conquer Forms with HTML5 and CSS3, illustrates how to implement cross-browser form techniques that work on everything from the latest smart phones to desktop browsers.
Chapter 9, Solving Cross-browser Responsive Challenges, explains how to make old Internet Explorer versions responsive, adapt a set of links to a menu on mobile devices, serve different content for high-resolution displays, and conditionally load assets with Modernizr.