Twitter: @mseiplax #DCFI Mårten Seiplax - AD and front end developer at svenska.yle.fi

Case: Svenska Yle - Implementing a mobile first responsive design

Why mobile first web app, and not an app or mobile specific site?

“First, a growing number of people are using mobile as the only way they access the Web. A pair of studies late last year from Pew and from On Device Research showed that over 25% of people in the US who browse the Web on smartphones almost never use any other platform.”

… “There’s a digital-divide issue here. People who can afford only one screen or internet connection are choosing the phone. If you want to reach them at all, you have to reach them on mobile. We can’t settle for serving such a huge audience a stripped-down experience or force them to swim through a desktop layout in a small screen.”

Josh Clark http://www.netmagazine.com/opinions/nielsen-wrong-mobilehttp://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2012/04/19/why-we-shouldnt-make-separate-mobile-websites/

• By designing the system mobile first, and not hiding content from mobile users you are reaching a bigger audience

• No apps to download and update

• Shared content device adjusted

• Return on investment

Actually building mobile first

• Making the site mobile first sets some limitations, and also affects the design process

• Designing from mobile to desktop, or from desktop to mobile all at once designing in the browser

Drupal, Omega and mobile first

• Compression of CSS– Omega structure prevents loading of CSS

per set of widths via JS – needed to prevent media queries from loading all CSS

• CSS groups– possible to join CSS compression groups

into fewer CSS files

• IE specific CSS is loaded before Omega CSS

Which theme, fluid or set of sizes?

Layout

• We decided to go for a very sparsely decorated layout, to keep the UI clean and to make the basic responsive design as light as possible

• Define areas for graphics, keeping the layout completely CSS generated

• We wanted to gain experience before we had built a swamp that it is difficult to dig yourself out of

Loads of markup

Images

• Small image that works on mobile, if JS detects enough screen space switches to a bigger image

• JS loads & inserts different sizes depending on what size best fits the image slot in the layout template

• Prevent image flickering with CSS

CodeFirst load

 After the javascript has been loaded

 

<img itemprop="image" alt="VPS, augusti 2011" title="VPS slog HJK." src="http://static.yle.fi/ims/imssv/2011/36/586284e6cf0a1e58bb/586284e6cf0a1e58bb_6.jpg" width="200" height="113" class="imsImg" data-ims-id="58628" />

<img itemprop="image" alt="VPS, augusti 2011" title="VPS slog HJK." src="http://static.yle.fi/ims/imssv/2011/36/586284e6cf0a1e58bb/586284e6cf0a1e58bb_5.jpg" width="200" height="113" class="imsImg processed" data-ims-id="58628" data-src-fluid="http://static.yle.fi/ims/imssv/2011/36/586284e6cf0a1e58bb/586284e6cf0a1e58bb_5.jpg" data-src-narrow="http://static.yle.fi/ims/imssv/2011/36/586284e6cf0a1e58bb/586284e6cf0a1e58bb_4.jpg" data-src-normal="http://static.yle.fi/ims/imssv/2011/36/586284e6cf0a1e58bb/586284e6cf0a1e58bb_6.jpg" data-src-wide="http://static.yle.fi/ims/imssv/2011/36/586284e6cf0a1e58bb/586284e6cf0a1e58bb_5.jpg">

Video & audio

• Most of our videos and audio are embedded from our media service Arena– Flash free first embed, has a big effect on

our mobile first approach– responsive design solution is out of the box– Arena requires Flash for video playback

• For Youtube and Vimeo we are using FitVids.js

Actions taken to reduce KB size & http requests

• Image and video solution • Social share buttons• Articles only load core content, additional parts

are loaded with JS

KB size on mobile compared with desktop

Amount of HTTP requests on mobile compared with desktop

Lessons learned

• Views - always click to remove the extra markup - and give the block a unique style name

• Iframes and auto height is causing grief• We used a small image in our first iteration, and

got feedback on that it was to small

Issue list

• Improve the theme / switch to a newer one• Improve on Twitter, Facebook integrations - they are

not working correctly with the responsive design– Other external resources such as data visualizations,

weather, sport resultshttp://svenska.yle.fi/artikel/2012/05/12/haglund-pop-bland-unga-henriksson-bland-aldrehttp://svenska.yle.fi/artikel/2012/06/01/har-saljer-alkoholdrycker-basthttp://sc.score24.com/scorecenter/o10n/uefa/euro/2012/yle/?lang=swe

• Work more with the layout• Implement bigger images• Build a content breakpoint on subject pages

Questions?

• Twitter: @mseiplax• Come and talk to me• Follow our development– On Twitter #ylesynd– On our blog: utveckling.ylebloggen.fi

svenska.yle.fi