Responsive design brings The Boston Globe to a wider audience

Responsive design is the most significant shift we’ve seen in the way websites are built in quite some time. Rather than developing a website that only works well on computers (and maybe a totally separate site for certain mobile devices), the responsive approach allows designers to build websites that seamlessly adapt to any screen size. Whether it’s a computer with a huge display, a tablet, or a smartphone, a responsive site is smart enough to adjust its layout and features to give users the best experience.

The most high profile website to incorporate a responsive design is The Boston Globe, which launched just a few weeks ago. For those who are curious about what responsive design really is, take a look and try resizing your browser’s window to see how the site reacts. The agency behind The Boston Globe’s new site started the project in November 2010 and spent nearly 10 months building it from the ground up. They solved a number of technical challenges and ended up with a final product that’s getting a lot of attention from both the design community and the site’s readers.

The Boston Globe took a mobile-first approach, which meant prioritizing which features and content were most important. By default, the site serves pages that are lightweight and fast to load – perfect for smartphones on slower 3G connections. The site then loads higher resolution images and additional content if the visitor is using a tablet or computer. This is a technique called progressive enhancement, which establishes a baseline for all devices and then dynamically adds features and improves the user experience depending on the device’s size and capabilities. The site also utilizes HTML5 local storage to allow users to save articles to their reading list so they can view them at any time – even when they’re not connected to the internet.

It’s clear that a lot of time and effort went into creating The Boston Globe’s new responsive site. And while it’s fascinating to deconstruct for design geeks like us, it’s also important to focus on the business benefits. Put simply, it’s all about creating a more pleasurable and immersive user experience for their readers. People expect the sites they visit to accommodate them wherever they are, no matter what kind of device they’re using. Responsive design achieves that and brings their content to a much larger audience of people who no longer rely solely on their Mac or PC to browse the web.

Tags: web design

This entry was posted on Monday, October 3rd, 2011 at 6:04 pm and is filed under Web Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.