Deciding in the Browsers
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Just a thought. Now that some web designers and developers are moving to âdesigning in the browserâ are we unintentionally boxing ourselves by doing so? Are designers now mainly designing in one browser at different sizes.
I hope not. That does not really work.
Time Flies
I really cannot believe it was 2008 when Andy Clarke proposed the idea of designing in the browser. I guess itâs because itâs being reiterated in many forms that it just seems like a fresh idea still.
Although there are many posts, talks, interviews about how we should all be designing in the browser there are no rules and if you cannot design purely in the browser thatâs not a problem.
Itâs not binary.
âDeciding in the browserâ
The phrase reimagined by Dan Mall in September 2012 shows the progression of thought around the idea. I think it needs changing. Ever so slightly. âBrowserâ to me just screams âone thingâ. If we made this âbrowsersâ Iâd be happier. This, to me, means more than resizing your chrome window.
I saw a site today, Oh boy.
So this is all spurred on from a recent designers new site being launched. If you know me, youâll know Iâm pretty much on twitter 24/7. Consequently Iâd say 98% of all links I click are opened in Chrome iOS rather than Chrome on my Air.
So clicking a link I was presented with a readability nightmare. 3/4 words per line of text and huge amount of margin either side of the text. Without getting my Gridset ruler out I would guess at 80 pixels of my 320 pixels was made up of white space. 25% of a small screen is quite large.
Checking the site on my Air though, at 320 pixels wide, and it looked nice. The margin didnât seem so huge. It worked.
Thisâd be where, possibly, deciding in just the one browser isnât a great idea. You need to decide, design and test on anything youâve got to hand to make the best device-agnostic site you can.
So, letâs call it âdeciding in the browsersâ whether we start with Photoshop or HTML/CSS. Just donât restrict yourself to one browser.
Okay?
