Responsive Web Design is a hot topic in the Creative Jar offices over the last couple of months - numerous discussions have been held, and I even gave a presentation on the topic to get minds thinking and looking for opportunities to bring this into our projects. I could talk about Responsive Web Design for hours, but I won’t today - I will save that for another blog post.
Following on from these discussions, I wanted to get a better handle on the mobile support of Responsive Web Design. It is easy to get tunnel-visioned and just care about iOS users - oh no, that would be too easy, and like only supporting Chrome on the desktop. Therefore, I tested a number of the mobiles available for their support of responsive web design.
| Mobile/Platform |
Screen variations |
HTML5/CSS3 support |
CSS3 Media Queries |
| iPhone 4S / iOS |
Landscape & Portrait |
Good |
Good |
| Windows 7 |
Landscape & Portrait |
Good |
Good |
| Sony Ericsson Xperia / Android |
Landscape & Portrait |
Good |
Good |
| HTC Hero / Android |
Landscape & Portrait |
Good |
Good |
| Nokia / Symbian |
Landscape & Portrait |
Average |
Good |
Whilst it is great news that the majority of the phones I tested have good support of the technologies which make up Responsive Web Design, it isn't the end of the world if they didn't - a nice fallback of Responsive Web Design is that the standard view would be rendered. Things will be harder to navigate (as is the main reason of creating a Responsive Web Design), but not the end of the world.