About Technology

Google has officially recommended Responsive Web Design as their preferred method for building mobile websites. If user have a website or a blog, it is time that user seriously consider switching to a responsive design instead of maintaining a separate mobile-friendly (or tablet-friendly) website.

One Design, Multiple Screens

If user are new to the concept of Responsive Web Design (RWD), here’s a quick guide that should answer most of the common questions that user may have around this technique. Let’s get started.

Q1 – Why should I switch my website to Responsive Design?

A1 – Your website looks great of the desktop screen but the same may not be true when userr site is viewed on a smartphone, a tablet or an e-reader (like the Kindle). Once user make the design responsive, the website will look good (and readable) on all screens and not just the desktop.

Q2 – What are the other advantages of switching to RWD?

A2: With Responsive Design, user can create one design and it will automatically adapt itself based on the screen size of the mobile device. This approach offers plenty of advantages:

It save time and money as user don’t have to maintain separate websites for desktops and mobile phones.
Responsive Design is good for userr website’s SEO (search rankings) as every page on userr site will have a single URL and thus Google juice is preserved. You don’t have to worry about situations where some sites link to userr mobile site while other link to userr desktop site.
Your Google Analytics reports will paint a better picture of userr site’s usage since the data from mobile and desktop users will be consolidated.
The same will be true for the social sharing stats (Facebook Likes, Tweets, +1′s) since the mobile and desktop versions of userr web pages will no longer have different URLs.
Responsive Designs are easier to maintain as they do not involve any server-side components. You just have to modify the underlying CSS of a page to change its appearance (or lausert) on a particular device.
The earlier design methods looked at user agent strings to determine the mobile device name and the browser that is making the request. That was less accurate and with the number of devices and mobile browsers expanding every day, that matrix is very difficult to maintain. Responsive Design doesn’t care about user agents.

Q3 – What should I know to get started with Responsive Design?

A3 – Responsive Design is pure HTML and CSS. You create simple rules in CSS that change style based on the screen-size of the user’s device.

For example, user can write a rule that says if a user’s screen-size is less than 320 pixels, don’t show the sidebar or if the screen size is greater than 1920 pixels (widescreen desktop), increase the font size of the body text to 15px. Here are the same rules translated to code:

  @media screen and (max-width:320px) {
    .sidebar { display: none }
  }
  @media screen and (min-width:1920px) {
    body { font-size: 15px }
  }

Q4 – How do I check if particular website is makes use of Responsive Design?

A4 – That’s easy. Open that website in any desktop browser and resize the browser. If the site’s lausert changes as user resize, the design is responsive. You can also use these online tools to compare the different lauserts of a page in the same tab.

Q5 – Can user share examples of some good websites that are responsive?

A5 – That are quite a few but my favorites include The Boston Globe (news website), Simple Bits (personal blog), Happy Cog (web design agency), Barack Obama (yes, the President’s website), Shake Shack (restaurant chain), Nicole & Josh (wedding website), Food Sense (cooking & recipes), dConstruct 2012 (design conference) and Good to Know (Google’s site on online safety). You should also check out mediaqueri.es, a curated gallery of websites that use Responsive Design.

Q6 – If I go with the Responsive Design approach, will my website work with older browsers?

A6 – Mostly yes. RWD uses CSS3 media-queries and HTML5 (for better semantics) that are not supported in older versions of IE. However, there are JavaScript based solutions – respond.js and modernizr for example – that bring the power of CSS3 and HTML5 to older browsers including IE6.

Q7 – Does Responsive Design play nicely with advertising networks like Google AdSense?

A7 – If user using ads on userr website, user should carefully choose the formats because wide units (like the 728×60 pixel leaderboard) may not fit on a 320px mobile screen. I prefer using standard rectangular units (like 300×250) on my blog since they easily fit on smartphone screens and widescreen desktops.

The one issue with Responsive Design is that ad slots on userr website that are above the fold (ATF) often gets pushed down on the mobile version and clients may not always like that (if they have paid user for a premium ATF slot).

Q8 – There are thousands of mobile devices. What screen resolutions should my responsive website support?

A8. Open userr Google Analytics dashboard and choose Audience -> Technology -> Browser & OS. Now switch to the Screen Resolution tab in the report and see the resolution of mobile devices that people are using to browser userr site.

I would recommend setting break points for at least the following viewports in userr CSS3 Mediaqueries - 320px (iPhone landscape), 480 px (iPhone portrait), 600px (Android Tablets), 768px (iPad + ~Galaxy Tabs) and 1024px (iPad landscape and desktops).

Q9 – How do I get started with Responsive Web Design? Any good tutorials?

A9 – First, read this article by Ethan Marcotte and then buy his book. Ethan coined the term and popularized the technique ever since he wrote that article for A List Apart back in 2010.

Here are more online resources to help user get started:

Websites – Net Magazine, Smashing Magazine, CSS Tricks and Web Designer Wall[these websites and blogs frequently cover responsive design]
Video Tutorials – YouTube, Net Tuts [responsive design 101]
Presentations – PowerPoint Decks [the best online presentations around RWD]
Books – Code Poet [web design experts discuss techniques for designing WordPress responsively. The book is available in PDF, Kindle and ePUB formats]
Podcasts – Shop Talk, 5by5 Web Show and The Industry [audio and video podcasts around web design where hosts frequently bring up the topic of responsive web design]
Twitter – @RWD, @NetMag and @SmashingMag [accounts worth following on Twitter]

Q10 – What are some of the disadvantages of using Responsive Design?

A10 – Responsive Design may add some extra kilobytes to userr web page as they will have to get CSS styles and JavaScript files that were otherwise unnecessary. The other problem is around images. You don’t want to serve higher-resolution images on userr mobile site but that is hard to achieve in responsive design (unless user resort to a server-side workaround like Adaptive Images and Sencha.io).

Finally, there is a learning curve involved and it will take effort to add a responsive layer to userr existing website. Sometimes it may make more sense to start from scratch rather than making userr existing fixed-width website fluid.

This seems a little redundant, doesn’t it? Well, I don’t think so. I’ve been exploring these various cameras in different light shot by different sites and it was DPReview’s turn because they shoot a nice still life test image under very well controlled and very bright lights. Thus, we see how the cameras function when you are shooting sports in evening light and want to get really fast shutter speeds. (See, there is a madness to my method.)

So the usual rules apply. I download the RAW files and manipulate them to match as best I can. More importantly, each file is as good as I can get it with a certain level of noise and detail. Here, I chose to get the noise pretty low, thus risking the details a bit. But you will see that they responded well because of the abundant light.

Further, I took five crops, including some of my very favorites. I had one fellow respond to my second last test (the controversial one) that I should just look at the DPReview RAW files if I want to know the difference between the D800 and the m4/3 cameras. Well, that tells only part of the story because the defaults are rarely optimal for any particular use. I find them mildly interesting, but I find processed images much more interesting because it gives a clear idea of what is possible with the RAW files. That is what matters to me, not what the defaults look like. Heck, my guess is that there is a fair bit of randomness to the defaults and what would that tell you? (Hint: nothing interesting.)

Ok, let’s move on. As always, I will start with the four cameras’ output at web size. This is indicative of what you should expect with small prints. Probably close enough up to 8x10, especially in this abundant light. I will reverse the last sequence and start with the best one.

NOTE: The following complete (but severely reduced in size and compressed) images have been eliminated from this post at the request of DPReview.com as they do not agree that these fall under the “fair use” doctrine for commentary. If you are interested in seeing what these look like at web sizes, you can download the RAW images using the links I attached to the thumbnails and process them yourself, then reduce to web size.

Sorry …

BY the way, another alternative to looking at my processing would be to go directly to the comparator on the DPReview site (link provided below to the D800 page where the comparison is available) and select these four cameras to see how the RAW images look like at Adobe defaults. I consider that interesting, but not quite indicative of the ultimate potential of the images. Still, some prefer that method to mine. Here is a good entry point for that:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-d800-d800e/33

D800

D800 3200iso f/11 1/500

Wow … 1/500 at f/11 …. now that’s a lot of light!

D600

D600 3200iso f/11 1/400

Minus 1/5 stops of light. Interesting difference in metering. By now you would think that DPReview would know not to screw around with in camera meters and simply use a standard exposure with a hand held meter. Oh well …

OM-D E-M5

OM-D E-M5 3200iso f/6.3 1/800

Since diffraction sets early on m4/3 sensors, they kept it at f/6.3. Of course, crop factor 2 says that they achieve DOF similar to f/12.6 on full frame anyway.

GH2

GH2 3200iso f/6.3 1/1250

Yikes … the GH2 is given 1/2 stops less light than the OM-D. This is a familiar pattern by now and is a great reason for normalizing the exposures to a hand held meter. Luckily, there is enough light that the GH2 does not suffer much. But frankly, it would do better given the same amount of light as the OM-D.

So what you should be noticing about all of these is that they are all excellent! Seriously, I’m amazed at how clean they all look at this size. This is what drives people to say that all cameras look alike in bright light. Because it is becoming true. At least for web and small print display.

But you didn’t come here to see that stuff. You want crops Smile

Crop 1

The infamous globe.

You will notice that the D800 is essentially perfect with the D600 only a hair behind. The OM-D is very good with the GH2 only a hair behind. Wow …

Crop 2

The watch and the hair. (Sounds like a mystery novel.)

The same relationship holds again, although the GH2 is closer to the OM-D this time. Only some slight increased grain in the smooth patches gives way to the OM-D. The hair and watch are a draw. Very nice.

Crop 3

The coin, the etching and the needlepoint. (Another mystery novel.)

A very clear difference between the sensor sizes again. Little to choose between the two m4/3 cameras where the etching and the wool are concerned. The coin and the text are a bit cleaner though on the OM-D and the red is more saturated. But the difference is fairly subtle and this is the equivalent of looking at a 46” print from 20 inches. Never forget that.

Crop 4

Deep Shadow and the Paper Clips. (A great band name.)

Again the full frame cameras look incredibly smooth. No surprise of course. The two m4/3 cameras still look great with the GH2 faring slightly worse, but mainly with color integrity and some extra grain. I find the GH2 a tad more splotchy and grainy in deep shadow. The detail remains, though, which will surprise a few people. This cam is still really good, especially I n decent light.

Crop 5

The bottle, the brush and the ropes. (Either a Narnia installment, or perhaps a game of Clue.)

The bottle is getting pretty dusty over time lol. The smooth glass looks amazing for 3200iso on the full frame images. It is slightly grainier on the m4/3 images, but not overly. The brush is well rendered on all images, although it carries some grain in the m4/3 images. The ropes are surprisingly clear on all as well. This is impressive stuff. Minimal difference between the m4/3 cams this time round.

Conclusion

Wow. What can I say? At 3200iso under decent light these cameras all do a great job. The difference between the FF and m4/3 cameras is much less than I expected going into this comparison. Kudos to Sony and Panny for some pretty amazing sensors, especially in light of the Panny sensor being several years old by now with all the others being pretty new technology.

It’s a great time to be a high ISO shooter, that’s for sure.