Demonstrating responsive design to clients.

http://jamus.co.uk/demos/rwd-demonstrations/

by jnye131 • 14 years ago

188 40 14 years ago

jamus.co.uk

0x0• 14 years ago

Nice idea, would be even better executed if the "embedded webpage" would be clipped to the device frames during resize.

Clicking on the landscape iphone while in portrait iphone mode shows the full landscape embedded webpage on top of the frame while the frame resizes, which is kinda jarring.

karanbhangui• 14 years ago

Nice idea, well executed. Would be nice if the URL can be exposed as a GET parameter so it can be linked to.

kristianc• 14 years ago

Yeah - that was exactly what I was hoping for.

I'd love to be able to send an email to some potential clients along the lines of 'Have you thought about responsive design? Here's why it matters in the context of your current site.'

jnye1312• 14 years ago

I'll pass that on, see if it can be done.

Peroni• 14 years ago

Scroll bars are frustrating given the amount of effort put into this, plus the sites I tested aren't rendered the way they actually appear on an iPhone meaning I wouldn't be confident showing this to clients.

aqrashik• 14 years ago

Nice.

I also like http://mattkersley.com/responsive/ which shows different resolutions side by side, I find it easier to compare.

abeh2• 14 years ago

Great idea. One improvement might be to make the mobile view look more like a mobile device; now it looks very much like the tablet. Perhaps the borders (sides in portrait, top and bottom in landscape) could be thinner.

abeh2• 14 years ago

Also, if this page itself was responsive would be nice: resizing the browser would select the appropriate view.

sirwitti• 14 years ago

Some time ago there was http://responsive.is/ posted on hn, which is awesome!

this looks quite cool too, but changing between "devices" makes the iframe jump. anyway, cool stuff! martin

projectedoptics• 14 years ago

I think the jump is more realistic, it means the resize event will only be fired once. Which is what the orientation change on a mobile device would do.

http://responsive.is/ animates the iframe resize meaning the event will be repeatedly fired.

sxtxixtxcxh• 14 years ago

yeah, but resizing a browser window fires the resize event multiple times. responsive design isn't mobile specific, practically by definition.

spookylukey• 14 years ago

This doesn't work with sites that return 'X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN' or 'DENY', which is probably the simplest and best click-jacking countermeasure. It's used by some big sites (e.g. Google), and increasingly used by modern frameworks (e.g. in Django 1.4 it is not yet on by default, but extremely easy to enable - just uncomment one line in the default settings file).

Something to be aware of!

janlukacs• 14 years ago

i like it, great idea. I almost missed the fact that you can check out any website - maybe emphasize the input box for the url more?

TeMPOraL• 14 years ago

Just couldn't help myself.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/216352/drdception.png

icode• 14 years ago

Does not really work. Because it just renders stuff in an iframe. But actual devices behave quite differently. For example an ipad fools the website about its pixel size. So it renders very different from how its displayed here.

For example meteor.com fits nicely into my ipad and even into my android phone. But this page makes it look like it does not fit at all.

Also tried other sites and had the same effect. Sites that have no magic css/js to cope with different screen sizes or devices. They work on the devices and not on this website.

rplnt• 14 years ago

Does it really fool the website? Because iPad has much higher pixel density than average monitor I think.

JCB_K• 14 years ago

That's why you set the initial scale to 1.0 when you're designing a responsive website. This disables the default iOS behaviour to scale a website to fit within the screen.

ceejayoz5• 14 years ago

You can also set minimum/maximum scales, or disable user-initiated scaling entirely. Very handy in some cases.

Trufa• 14 years ago

Maybe I understood it wrong, but, wasn't the point of this showcase to show how it should look rather than how to make it look like that in all of the devices?

I think it wasn't meant to be the kind of thing you open in your different devices and look how it looks rather, this is how content should adapt, does it make any sense?

sophiedennis2• 14 years ago

exactly :)

sophiedennis2• 14 years ago

The tool is for demonstrating what's meant by "responsive design" to lay/non-web people. So it isn't trying to show how a non-responsive site without any "magic css/js" like meteor.com might display, or replicate the behaviour of any specific device or mobile browser. It's specifically NOT designed for actually testing designs - you need to do that with actual mobiles and tablets.

lucian1900• 14 years ago

It assumes I keep my browser window maximised. Bad assumption.

jnye1312• 14 years ago

It's actually a great tool for demonstrating to clients what you mean by responsive website design

ceejayoz5• 14 years ago

Similar: http://www.responsinator.com/

darien• 14 years ago

I think this is the best one I've seen so far.

irishstu• 14 years ago

If they don't like it when you're at this stage, you're in trouble! How are people presenting/explaining responsive designs at the concept stage? Designing in browser? Multiple mockups? Mood boards and style guides?

Flenser2• 14 years ago

It shows 4 layouts for https://trello.com Nothing you couldn't get by resizing your browser though.

dermatthias• 14 years ago

Yes. But clients will understand this one better, with different known devices right in front of their eyes. Some of our clients can't map a resized browser window to a smartphone <-> tablet switch.

Flenser2• 14 years ago

I agree. Just pointing out that it's not doing anything to emulate any of the behaviour of any device. It's still rendering as whatever your browser will show for those sizes, same user-agent/css/javascript behaviour. Still, as a demonstration tool it will be very useful.

lukeholder• 14 years ago

As has already been noted, this doesn't take into account media queries and viewport scaling.

But i tell you what does? Testing on actual devices with an amazing tool called adobe shadow.

VIDEO: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/adobe-technology-sneaks-2012/adobe...

download: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/shadow/

WickyNilliams• 14 years ago

I'd just like to say, thank you very much for the heads up here. This looks SERIOUSLY cool and seems like it would solve all the niggling issues we've been having with mobile web development. Can't believe nobody else here has jumped on this

overshard• 14 years ago

Already been done a few times...

http://responsive.is/ for example.

LocalPCGuy• 14 years ago

One of the common "mistakes" I see with these tools is to base the iframe size on exactly 320 or 480, etc. The scroll bar should be outside of the width of the "device".

jamus• 14 years ago

Wow. Thanks for the all responses people. There are some really good suggestions here. I have added the project to GitHub for anyone interested in improving the tool.

https://github.com/jamus/rwd-demonstration

Demonstrating responsive design to clients.

Related Stories