Recently, I had the pleasure of implementing the ability to translate content on a Drupal 7 site. Here is an outline of my recent experiences that will hopefully help any developer who is having trouble getting started with content translation in Drupal 7.
One of the most important factors in evaluating a website design is answering the question, “What is the average screen size my visitors will use to view my site?” Over the past few years, this evaluation process has become both more complex and more confusing due to the explosion of Internet-connected devices. Website access has shifted dramatically, and mobile/tablet browsing is expected to surpass desktop usage over the next two years.
The keyboard and mouse are no longer the predominant input tools, and we have gone from designing for three major desktop browsers to a myriad of devices ranging from touch-based tablets and phones; smartphones with tiny keyboards; video game controllers and television remotes. In the near future, high-resolution tablets and computer displays will be on the market, and this change will require that pixel-based web design be completely rethought.
Over the past two years, our clients have requested sites built for specific devices—a “main” site for desktops, a “mobile” version with a specific design intended for smartphones, and more recently an “iPad” version—which is really a simplified version of their desktop site. As you can imagine, this strategy introduces a lot of management complexity and cost into the web design and content management process.
Fortunately, there is is a solution. The recent adoption of HTML5 and CSS3 by browser makers, in addition to some JavaScript-based fallback methods, have introduced the holy grail of inter-device design compatibility: responsive design.
Simply put, responsive design is a flexible, device-independent technique that allows a single site layout to automatically “shift and adapt” to any size of browser window on any device, at any screen resolution.
In other words, your site’s design layout will readjust to best fit the screen on which it is being viewed. This is accomplished by shifting the location of navigation and content on the page, adding or removing content, and increasing or decreasing image and font sizes so the site automatically provides the best layout for any screen.
Responsive design isn’t a single technology; it represents a radically different strategic design approach and development workflow. We believe it to be so beneficial that we are often recommending that many of our clients consider responsive design for their content-managed sites.
These are some of the benefits that responsive design offers:
Now that you know what responsive design is, it’s time to learn how to drive implementation within your organization. After the holidays, I’ll discuss drawbacks, introduce you to the responsive design workflow and introduce a strategy for integrating responsive design into your existing sites.
This post will be updated with links to the subsequent articles.
2011 proved to be an exciting year, and we anticipate 2012 to be even better. Take a peek at the trends we’ll be watching in 2012. Happy Holidays!
Wallet? What wallet? I have my phone.
There is no doubt the penetration of smartphones has changed the way we communicate, inform and entertain each other. Mobile devices have also changed the way we shop—helping us locate, evaluate and recommend every kind of product or services imaginable, but we still have to pull out the plastic (yeah, some still carry cash) to transact… Well, that final frontier of the commerce experience is also changing, and fast.
In late November a truly unprecedented cadre of tech companies with the likes of Google, Yahoo!, LinkedIn, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, the Wikimedia Foundation, Microsoft and many others came out in vocal opposition against H.R. 3261 – the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Senate bill S.968 – Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (Protect-IP).
ThoughtMatrix is joining Silicon Valley tech leaders in opposing this legislation because provisions in these two bills will irrevocably damage the technically and civilly free internet as we know it, and potentially wipe out the fastest growing Silicon Valley job creators.
At a recent TechWeek Chicago event, I presented the major technology trends that are changing how existing UX design processes are viewed and the new approaches companies can employ to stay ahead of these trends. Both “Lean UX” and the rapid growth of mobile browsing have contributed to our radical approach to reinventing teams and processes to meet the challenges of today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape. This new approach is born out of two ideas circulating amongst the User Experience and App Development communities that moves away from traditional design processes to a more iterative and open approach and also considers developing for mobile users first as a means to focus the design.
For more detailed information on the forces driving rapid change in the UX Design field, watch the “What’s Next for UX” webinar that illustrates new approaches and presents practical methods to help design teams stay ahead of these trends. Watch the webinar now >
Coming up with a mobile content strategy is not as simple as taking your desktop content and making it present well in a smaller format. You must look at the mobile user differently than the desktop user and determine how their scenario might be different while on the go.
As I set up my Google+ profile, I thought “How am I going to find the time to manage yet another social media account?” I already have three Twitter accounts, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, two Facebook Fan Pages and let’s not forget my YouTube account, which has an endearing video of me and my 79-year old dad singing “Happy Birthday” to my nephew.
Not too long ago I was consistently posting updates using TweetDeck (and HootSuite on my iPhone and iPad), and it only took me about 15 minutes per day.
We recently uncovered an excellent example of the immature state of Drupal 7 versus its well-established predecessor Drupal 6. We noticed early on in a recent project that the underlying data structure for content had changed in Drupal—there is now a component of the content-element data object that stores a Language ID for each value, which didn’t exist in D6 (granted, it’s always set to “undefined”, but it is there). This means that, in theory, individual content elements can have different language values, even in a single node (e.g. /node/123 can be displayed with English or French content).
The English language can be quite peculiar at times, especially with so many words sounding alike but having different meanings. Consider this sentence: I wonder whose dog is the one who’s constantly leaving little presents on my lawn. When reading it, you can easily see the difference between whose and who’s but it’s not so obvious just hearing it. To help you know which one to use when, I’ve included some definitions and examples of whose and who’s below.
“To apostrophe or not to apostrophe?” that is the question. (Wait, I think I just verbed a noun there. Actually, I was checking to see if anyone was paying attention to Grammar Guide 7: Nouns Gone Wild.) Anyway…if you’re wondering whether to use it or it’s, here is where you’ll find the answer. Following are the meanings and some examples of its and it’s.
