Web Professional Trends for 2013 – Chris Converse, Codify Design Studio
In this twelve minute interview Chris Converse, partner, designer and developer at Codify Design Studio we learn about his perspective on the topic of Web Professional Trends for 2013 as it relates to Responsive Design, Responsive Downloads and Responsive Imagery.
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Specifically we learn:
• About Chris and his Codifydesign.com Company
• More about Chris’s education and advocacy efforts to bridge the relationship between the Web Designer and Web developer
• About how he is building on the Responsive Design trends with Responsive Download discoveries
• About Responsive Imagery
• About Responsive Downloads with Media Quires, CSS3 and HTML5 Elements
• About faster downloads with less intensive bandwidth requirements
• Advice for those that teach
• Pros and the Cons of Responsive Imagery
• Efforts at the W3C that will enable browsers to communicate to the server and your device with specific download speed capabilities that could deliver high res images to your Mobile device
• Examples of Server Side Responsive Imagery to detect things with PHP and .NE, picking out those images and dynamically assembling them
• Trends to make images more compelling for tablets that are more animated and compelling that will utilize Containers and JavaScript that to achieve responsive download techniques
• How much we’ve progressed as an industry in the last decade
• An open discussion between Bill Cullifer, WebProfessionals.org Exec and Chris Converse regarding the current status of the industry
• About some of the debate in the Web Design community about best practices
• More about the great work at the w3c to support the Web professional community
• Some wireless industry history and honorable mention of wireless pioneer Craig McCaw from Bill Cullifer
• Links to more information about Chris and his resources
More about Responsive Download and Imagery
According to an article written by Chris for Lynda.com, when considering a responsive design for a website, many web designers and developers only consider the layout. While it is key to ensure the layout and composition make use of the user’s screen size, the download time should also be considered as part of the user experience.
To really understand the concept of designing for responsive download, we first need to take into account that CSS can be used to add imagery to HTML elements of webpages. From there it becomes more apparent that CSS3 media queries can be used to alter imagery, as well as layout, based on a user’s screen size.
With this in mind, the
Now, with CSS driving the imagery for the header element, combining CSS3 media queries with image assignments allows the imagery to adjust based on screen size. This allows designers to use larger, less compressed images for larger screens, while smaller screens reference smaller, more compressed images.
The ability to call on CSS referenced images that have varying dimensions and compression settings results in reduced download sizes and times for devices with smaller screens. This means the same HTML and CSS files will call on files for small- and large-screen devices, but the files called on for small-screen devices will be up to one-fifth the size of those called on for large-screen devices.
More about Chris Converse
Chris Converse has 20 years of experience in graphic design and interactive media, with a unique focus on both design and development. Chris possesses development skills across such languages as PHP, ActionScript, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and jQuery, making his design execution optimal across various media.
Chris is graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology with a degree in graphic design. He began his career in print, designing and preparing digital files for commercial offset printing. Chris has spent the last 15 years studying and applying design and interface principles to technology. His work spans various distribution media (CD-ROMs, web sites, and interactive DVDs) and applies many authoring media and techniques (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, image optimization, motion graphics, Flash, Director, Shockwave, sound engineering, digital video compression, PHP, and ASP). Chris has a passion for and a commitment to conceiving, creating, and delivering the best possible user experience, regardless of the medium.
If you’re interested in learning more about responsive web design in the lynda.com library, consider checking out Creating a Responsive Web Design from Chris Converse at the links below:
http://codifydesign.com
http://www.lynda.com/Chris-Converse/947917-1.html
A special shout out to Chris, a super nice and gracious guy for taking the time to talk with us!
A solid interview. Thanks for taking the time to interview Chris, who I’ve been following for a few years now. He is (in my opinion) the best teacher of CSS techniques, responsive web design, but most importantly as mentioned in the interview was his workflow. He has workflow down to the science that it is and it’s impressive. Good job on the interview and thanks for posting.
Thanks for the feedback. I agree, Chris is a rock solid guy and thank you for taking the time to respond.