Responsive Design: Patterns & Principles

FOREWORD

ETHAN MARCOTTE DIDN’T INVENT responsive web design. He did something much more important: he named it. He observed what was, at the time, a sprawling set of nascent tactics and identified among them an underlying strategy which, once named, became not just a way of doing web design, but the way of doing it. In the intervening years, the phrase “responsive web design” has become one of the few entries in the industry lexicon to find widespread adoption beyond the field, demonstrating not only the soundness of the methods but also the clarity and persuasiveness of the phrase. I was speaking to a carpenter recently when he confessed—unbidden—that it was important to him that his website be responsive.

That’s the power of a great name. ...