Is that HTML5? No, so stop asking. Seriously, do you even know what it is you are asking? When you say a strange blanket thing like that, you may as well be saying "is that an internet?"
HTML5 is 99% semantics, stuff going on behind the scenes, not a visual thing. Or would you prefer I give my answer based purely on the doctype of the page Im using? Dont get me wrong, I think HTML5 is great, a lot of the markup and speed benefits are really nice; but canvas aside, its stuff that the user doesnt see happening, they just benefit from it. Sadly its again the case of HTML5 is being used as a buzz-word. Being thrown around by people who want to sound like they know what theyre talking about.
"Is that CSS3?" would be a far more sensible thing to ask. While it is still a bit of a buzz-word, it is at least relevant. After all, CSS is presentational, and all the nice things you see like transitions, gradients, opacity and shadows are CSS3. Things you would have previously had to do with JavaScript now can be done purely in CSS, and to my mind, the results is much better.
Thats all I wanted to say on the matter, just please stop saying it. Dont make me resent the word for something that I love.
We've all heard of "responsive design" and it's a word that's been thrown around a lot. Sadly, as with all good things on the web, it has become somewhat a buzz word. "Our site is now fully responsive" has become about as meaningful as "full social media integration" (A link to their twitter and facebook pages). I'm going to do my best to clear a few things up, and introduce you to a new word: "adaptive".
Perhaps that's a little harsh, but I've seen the launch of a mobile site described as a site "going responsive". Simply put, no. Responsive is taking on the idea of one web: you make one website for all devices, instead of making in a different version of a website for each device type. Obviously there's a lot more to it than that, or I'd be explaining in a tweet rather than writing a full post about it.
A common misconception
When someone makes what they call a responsive site, often they have some very specific, hard-coded, breakpoints to shift the size down for iPad resolution, and iPhone resolution. There's nothing wrong with that per-say, but if I were to load up the site on a device sized say 10px smaller than an iPad, then I would be served the iPhone version with a large amount of margin either side of a column of content that is less than half the width of my screen. This is not responsive, this would be adaptive.
Adaptive sites are tailored to adapt to specific break points, such as the sizes of key devices used by the target audience. There is nothing wrong with making an adaptive site, it's a vast improvement over a completely static site, and it can be a lot more cost effective to do. There a plenty of great adaptive frameworks such as Skeleton[http://getskeleton.com/], which is based around a 16-column grid system.
Truly responsive
Responsive sites take this idea to the next level. The idea is that no matter what size device you view the website through, it responds to this and scales appropriately. The style of coding for this can be very different to conventions used in the past. Absolute widths and rigidity are very rarely used, in favour of percentages and fluidity, with then perhaps a minimum and a maximum width declared. Breakpoints are not set in stone, instead they are added as you go, while building you can scale the browser and see at what point content needs to be adjusted - for example a 3 column section collapsing down to 2 columns (or vice-versa).
This doesn't mean you need to be sticking in a media query [http://www.css3.info/preview/media-queries/] for every pixel change, you should still try and group them where possible, but don't have set breakpoints in your head before testing in a browser.
The long and short of it all
Neither method is wrong, responsive is a cleaner approach than adaptive, but both are far better than having multiple static sites. Just be aware that there is a difference, but whichever side of the line you fall on, be proud of what you achieve.
After working at Snow Valley for just over a month now, having learned vast amounts in such a short time, I thought it was about time I put my new skills to use on my own website.
MStrutt.co.uk is now fully HTML5 compliant taking advantage of all the lovely new features of CSS3 and all the -webkit extras. Soon I'll be adding in HTML5 Microdata and fully SEOptimise the site.
I see this happening many more times in the future as I continue to learn on the cutting edge of the web. Already this is filtering down into the other websites in my portfolio with a redesign of ei8htyei8ht.com in progress, and MSCycleBlog & HelpBuntu in the pipeline.
Today I start my professional placement at Snow Valley.
I will be working there for 12 months as a User Experience (UX) Developer. While there I will be working as part of a team on the cutting edge of the web, doing both inventive design and front-end development.
After being victorious in the first round, we took on-board our feedback, worked hard and we've done it again.
This time joint winners of the "Detica Team Project Prize for second year computing students May 2011".
The brief for the second part was to fully create the web-system that we had designed in the first part. Doing all of the server side scripting, the database management, the front-end development, the version control, and the project management entirely by ourselves.
The team worked very well together and did an incredible job against the stiff competition, coming joint first in what our tutors were calling the best overall results in years.
After a lot of hard work and keeping in close contact with the client we have a fully live website. Content will be coming up as available, but all the framework is in place.
Good news. As part of a team of 6 we won the "Accenture Team Project Prize for second year computing students December 2010". The months of hard work paid off and to the victors the spoils: £100 each.
The project was to redesign the system for submitting timetable requests at Loughborough University. We had to come up with an improvement for the current spreadsheet system, and then design and build a prototype of a fully interactive Website to replace the spreadsheet. To support this we had to come up with three detailed reports including Database diagrams and Use Case diagrams. Within the team my main roles were as Primary Web Developer and secondary Web Designer.
That's all for now, more updates to come soon no doubt.