Link tags: mediaqueries

Thoughts on Exerting Control With Media Queries - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

Some thoughts on CSS, media queries, and fluid type prompted by Utopia:

We say CSS is “declarative”, but the more and more I write breakpoints to accommodate all the different ways a design can change across the viewport spectrum, the more I feel like I’m writing imperative code. At what quantity does a set of declarative rules begin to look like imperative instructions?

In contrast, one of the principles of Utopia is to be declarative and “describe what is to be done rather than command how to do it”. This approach declares a set of rules such that you could pick any viewport width and, using a formula, derive what the type size and spacing would be at that size.

Can we have custom media queries, please?

I knew that custom properties don’t work in media queries but I had no idea that there was such a thing as custom media queries, which effectively do the same thing.

But this is not implemented in any browser. Boo! This would be so useful! If browser makers can overcame the technical hurdles with container queries, I’m sure they can deliver custom media queries.

Bruce Lawson’s personal site  : prefers-reduced-motion and browser defaults

I think Bruce is onto something here:

It seems to me that browsers could do more to protect their users. Browsers are, after all, user agents that protect the visitor from pop-ups, malicious sites, autoplaying videos and other denizens of the underworld. They should also protect users against nausea and migraines, regardless of whether the developer thought to (or had the tools available to).

So, I propose that browsers should never respect scroll-behavior: smooth; if a user prefers reduced motion, regardless of whether a developer has set the media query.

Responsive web design turns ten. — Ethan Marcotte

2010 was quite a year:

And exactly three weeks after Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 For Web Designers was first published, “Responsive Web Design” went live in A List Apart.

Nothing’s been quite the same since.

I remember being at that An Event Apart in Seattle where Ethan first unveiled the phrase and marvelling at how well everything just clicked into place, perfectly capturing the zeitgeist. I was in. 100%.

Case Study: lynnandtonic.com 2019 refresh - lynnandtonic.com

Lynn gives a step-by-step walkthrough of the latest amazing redesign of her website. There’s so much joy and craft in here, with real attention to detail—I love it!

Stepping away from Sass

I think Cathy might’ve buried the lede:

The knock on effect of this was removing media queries. As I moved towards some of the more modern features of CSS the need to target specific screen sizes with unique code was removed.

But on the topic of Sass, layout is now taken care of with CSS grid, variables are taken care of with CSS custom properties, and mixins for typography are taken care of with calc().

Personally, I’ve always found the most useful feature of Sass to simply be that you can have lots of separate Sass files that get combined into one CSS file—very handy for component libraries.

Concise Media Queries with CSS Grid

‘Sfunny, this exact use-case (styling a profile component) came up on a project recently and I figured that CSS grid would be the right tool for the job.

Designing for Inclusion with Media Queries

The slides and notes from a great presentation by Eric Bailey that takes a really thoughtful deep dive into media types, media queries, and inclusive design.

Lynn Fisher

This homepage is media-querytastic. It’s so refreshing to see this kind of fun experimentation on a personal site—have fun resizing your browser window!

PX, EM or REM Media Queries? by Zell Liew

Just recently on a Clearleft project, some of us were discussing whether there was a reason not to use rems instead of ems for media queries. Apart from one older browser implementation difference, we couldn’t come up with much.

Some in-depth research here supports the use of em values for media queries. Very good to know.

Mobile-first and IE8 Solution – Introducing grunt-legacssy (Updated) | Robin Plus

A handy way of automating the creation of old-IE stylesheets using Grunt. This follows on from Jake’s work in using preprocessors and conditional comments to send a different stylesheet to IE8 and below—one that doesn’t contain media queries. It’s a clever way of creating mobile-first responsive sites that still provide large-screen styles to older versions of IE.

Jonathan T. Neal | Thoughts on Media Queries for Elements

Some good ideas on the idea of element-level media queries, a feature that developers are crying out for and browser makers are saying is too hard. This post has some thoughts on how to deal with the potential issues.

Create a responsive ad unit - AdSense Help

Looks like Google are offering responsive (or at least adaptive) ad sizes.

Media Query Events Example

A page to demonstrate the conditional CSS technique I documented a while back.

IE10 Snap Mode and Responsive Design - TimKadlec.com

Useful advice from Tim on preparing your responsive site for IE10’s new “snap mode”. Don’t worry: it doesn’t involve adding any proprietary crap …quite the opposite, in fact.

IE-friendly mobile-first CSS with Sass 3.2

Jake demonstrates his technique for preprocessor-generated stylesheets for older versions of Internet Explorer (while other browsers get the same styles within media queries).

Issue #408: Generate a separate css with flattened media queries

This is an excellent idea from Jake: use a preprocessor to automatically spit out a stylesheet for older versions of IE that includes desktop styles (garnered from the declarations within media queries).

If you’re a dab hand with Ruby and you’d like to see this in SASS, you can help.

Springload: OnMediaQuery - Responsive Javascript

This is nice: the solution I blogged about for conditional CSS (reading media queries from JavaScript) all wrapped up in a nice small reusable bundle.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Responsive design – harnessing the power of media queries

Advice on creating responsive designs from Google. It’s not exactly the best tutorial out there (confusing breakpoints with device widths) but it’s great to see the big guns getting involved.

Deciding what Responsive Breakpoints to use | Tangled in Design

Another call for design-based (rather than device-based) breakpoints in responsive sites.