Jeff Croft

I’m a digital product designer and developer in Seattle, WA. I currently work with nGen Works, and recently co-founded Lendle, a Kindle book sharing service.

Some of my clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Copious, The New York Review of Books, The Lawrence Journal-World, and the University of Washington.

I’ve authored two books on web and interactive design and spoken at dozens of conferences around the world.

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Items tagged responsivewebdesign

  • Link // 04.10.2012 // 9:21 AM // 0 Comments

    Responsive Design, Responsively Illustrated

    Pretty cool (if not particularly useful).

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  • Link // 03.27.2012 // 6:08 PM // 0 Comments

    Responsive questions

    Jeremy Keith answers a bunch of great questions about responsive web design. I agree with almost every word of it. The only thing that bugs me is when he says people were “angry” that RWD doesnt solve mobile context issues. It bugs me because I can’t help feeling like he’s talking about me. “Angry” isnt the right word at all. I can honestly say I’ve never been “angry” about anything related to the web. This is my job, not my life. If I’m “angry” you’ll know it. I’ll probably never be “angry” about any topic I’d write about on this blog, or on Twitter. Rather, I simply raised a concern with the growing idea that using RWD for a website was a “magic bullet” for making a great mobile website. It’s not. It’s a useful tool, but not a be all and end all (largely because, again, it doesn’t address context issues).

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  • Link // 03.24.2012 // 9:32 AM // 1 Comment

    Content Folding

    Chris Coyier has some tips on using the new CSS Regions functionality with responsive layouts.

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  • Link // 03.20.2012 // 10:57 AM // 1 Comment

    Responsive Web Design: Missing the Point

    Nice piece by Brad Frost on adaptive design. Although it hits on several topics as well, it addresses my key issue with the trend that is “Responsive Web Design:” the dogmatism that Ethan Marcotte has put around it by insisting that a layout only qualifies as “Responsive Web Design” if it consists of fluid grids, fluid images, and media queries. The result of him shunning other techniques (multiple fixed grids, using JavaScript instead of media queries, etc.) is a community that now cares more about fitting into some arbitrary ideal (mostly to impress Ethan and each other), rather than the user experience. Adaptive layout and device-agnostic design is an incredibly important issue for users, and will continue to be, going forward. But “Responsive Web Design” in the sense of Ethan’s dogmatic prescription is overblown. There are many ways to achieve great multi-device user experiences. RWD is one of them, but by shunning all the others, we are doing our users a disservice.

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  • Link // 03.05.2012 // 9:42 PM // 0 Comments

    Scaling with EM units

    Great concept that willwork neatly with some designs (and not others).

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  • Blog entry // 03.02.2012 // 12:41 PM // 11 Comments

    How I’m implementing Responsive Web Design

    Responsive Web Design is hard. Really hard, actually. But I’ve recently been exploring ways to make it fit more neatly into my development workflow, and I thought it’d be worth sharing what I’ve learned. I don’t have all the answers, but I am finally to a point where Responsive feels worth the extra effort — and for me, that’s saying something.

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  • Blog entry // 02.01.2012 // 1:58 AM // 5 Comments

    A simple responsive grid system with fluid columns and fixed gutters

    Tonight, I took a stab at creating a quick-and-dirty responsive grid system with fluid columns and fixed gutters. Here’s what I came up with:

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  • Link // 01.30.2012 // 7:48 PM // 0 Comments

    How to Approach a Responsive Design

    Nice post detailing some of the design decisions that went into the recent Boston Globe redesign. More and more, my biggest concern with responsive techniques is maintainence. I’d personally really, really avoid choosing too many breakpoints. Seems like setting yourself up for nightmares down the road.

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  • Blog entry // 01.23.2012 // 2:03 PM // 12 Comments

    What it means to be “responsive”

    Over the past couple of years, I’ve been tagged with a reputation of being somehow an opponent to the technique Ethan Marcotte coined “Responsive Web Design” in his seminal A List Apart article of the same name. Ethan defines Responsive Web Design as a technique that incorporates fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries to deliver experiences that accommodate today’s multi-device world, and he has vigorously defended his brand name against any suggestions that there are other ways (besides fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries) to achieve the same effective result.

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  • Link // 01.16.2012 // 11:45 AM // 0 Comments

    Aaron Mentele Mobile Safari & Media Queries asset download tests

    Aaron did some terrific tests with regard to how Mobile Safari downloads assets (images, backgrounds, etc.) on elements which are hidden via media queries. Also, don’t miss his follow up piece.

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  • Blog entry // 01.13.2012 // 2:02 PM // 6 Comments

    On Smashing Magazine’s super-responsive design

    This week, Smashing Magazine, a truly great resource for web designers and front-end developers, launched a comprehensive redesign of their site, headed up by the ultra-talented Elliot Jay Stocks. Predictably, the site is beautiful, thoughtfully laid out, well-executed, and responsive. Like, really responsive.

    In fact, the site has six — count ‘em, six — unique layouts, split by five breakpoints. It’s quite an impressive feat to have built a design that adapts in so many ways based on the size of the viewport it’s displayed in. But I can’t help but wonder if we’ve gone over the top, here.

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