Responsive Image Strategies Front Porch Conference 2014 Dallas, TX

1. @lnorman16
Responsive Image
Strategies
Lindsey Norman

2. @lnorman16
Thank you
Mina Markham
Chris Williams

3. @lnorman16
Question:
“Who is this person standing in front of me?”
–Audience member
Answer:
Lindsey Norman
@lnorman16
(will tweet SlideShare link to this presentation)

4. @lnorman16
UX Designer

5. Source: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com @lnorman16

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Responsive Image
Strategies

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Responsive image drama
“Lots of the things we do on the web are hard,
but I reserve a special, damaged place in my
delicate dev heart just for images.”
-Lyza D. Gardner, A List Apart
!
“This is a very confusing subject. It needs to get
thought about and written about so it can shake
out and become a more ingrained part of our
collective front end developer consciousness.”
- Chris Coyier, CSS-Tricks

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This *is* complicated
Use Cases
• Resolution-based
selection
• Viewport-based
selection
• Device-pixel-ratio-based
selection
• Art direction
• Design breakpoints
• Matching media features
and media types
• Relative units
• Image formats
• User control over
sources
Techniques
• Picturefill
• Adaptive Images
• HiSRC
• HiSRC (alt. transparent
GIF + Media Query
approach)
• Responsive Images
• Responsive Images Alt
• Foresight.js
• src.sencha.io
• riloadr
• Responsive Enhance
• rwdImages
• Retina.ja
• Content Aware Resizing
• Doubletake
• Responsive Images with
PHP and jQuery
• Responsive Images with
Cookies
• Testing Responsive Images
• Creating responsive images
using the noscript tag
• Responsive Images and
TinySRC (Now Sencha.IO)
• Responsive Images Right
Now
• Responsive context aware
images without cookies or
server logic
• WURFL Server Side
Responsive Images
Sources: Use Cases | Techniques

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In case that wasn’t complicated enough,
let’s add some more complexity…

10. Source: House image @lnorman16

11. Source: Skyscraper image @lnorman16

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The conundrum of responsive images gets
even more complex with large scale websites
Source: Complicated gif

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Focus for this talk
Discuss my experience on recent
large-scale responsive project
• What lessons we learned during
the process
• How we handled responsive
images given our constraints

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Our scenario
• Large retail client
• Over $100 million in profits in 2013
• Massive amount of site content/number of
pages
• Organization new to responsive design, chose
to do a responsive retrofit
• Much of the image content changes frequently
• Art direction of high importance

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My role in the project
• I assisted the client’s Creative team in preparing
for the change to responsive design, focusing
specifically on responsive images

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My role in the project
• I assisted the client’s Creative team in preparing
for the change to responsive design, focusing
specifically on responsive images
• Responsive image strategies developed by the
unfairly-talented Nathan Smith
Source: https://twitter.com/nathansmith

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Big Lesson #1:
Responsive may seem old hat already,
but it’s still new to many organizations
Source: Hat image

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Web years = Dog years
• Responsive introduced
in 2010
• Therefore, responsive
has been in existence
for 28 years*
!
*not an actual fact
Source: Dog years image

19. Source: http://responsivewebdesign.com/podcast/ @lnorman16

20. Source: http://responsivewebdesign.com/podcast/ @lnorman16

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“The graphics team, when they were
designing their information graphics, all of a
sudden they had to start to think about
“What is this going to look like on mobile?”
which is something that they never had to
think about beforehand.”
–Miranda Mulligan
Digital Design Director, Northwestern University Knight Lab
The Boston Globe
Source: http://responsivewebdesign.com/podcast/boston-globe.html

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Big Lesson #2:
Style Guides = awesome

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2. Style Guides = awesome
• Keeps everyone on the same page
• Reference point for changes

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Some of our responsive
image strategies

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Retina Revolution
• Create image at 1.5 to 2
times larger than max width
• Highly compressed
• Often a lower file size than
exporting at actual size
with a low compression
• Looks really sharp on retina
displays
Sources: Retina Revolution | Compressive Images

26. @lnorman16
It makes no sense…
but it works

27. (this establishment in
Marfa, TX kind of
makes no sense… but
it somehow works. I
want to go to there.)
Source: http://www.yelp.com/biz/museum-of-electronic-wonders-and-latenight-grilled-cheese-parlour-marfa @lnorman16

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Percentage Crop
Source: Hipster image

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Percentage Crop

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Percentage Crop
• Involves moving the viewable area of image for smaller viewports
• For tablet/desktop, the full width of image shown
• For mobile widths, image has cropped focus

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Percentage Crop
• Addresses art direction use case
• Fast solution - one image instead of multiple
• Used most often by Creative team
• Easy to understand, minimal code

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Percentage Crop
The markup that Creative was responsible for:

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Percentage Crop: Lessons
1. Creative team wanted to have more control:
• Left, right, and center crop
• More percentage options (50-90%, with
5% increments in between)

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Nathan’s krazee Sass loop

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Percentage Crop: Lessons
2. Templates can help team members
grasp responsive concepts faster

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Percentage Crop

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<picture> Element
Source: Mini hipsters image

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<picture> Element
• Requires designating separate image assets
for mobile, tablet/desktop
• Uses Picturefill.js
• More time intensive/used less often by the
Creative team
• Good for pages of high importance

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<picture> Element
The markup that Creative was responsible for:

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<picture> Element: Lessons
1. Be thorough when discussing media queries
2. Include discussion of HTML5 elements

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<picture> Element

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<picture> Element
with absolutely positioned links
Source: Manly items image

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<picture> Element
with absolutely positioned links

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<picture> Element
with absolutely positioned links

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<picture> Element
with absolutely positioned links

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<picture> Element
with absolutely positioned links

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<picture> Element with absolutely
positioned links

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<picture> Element with absolutely
positioned links
• Much more time intensive to create than the
alternative (aka image maps)
• Intimidating for Creative team at first
• Better for user experience, especially on
mobile

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<picture> Element with absolutely
positioned links
Lessons:
1. Show how to design in the browser
2. Discuss mobile hit states/legibility
3. This takes time to learn and master

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Help to close the
knowledge gap

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Help to close the knowledge gap
The problem:
• Creative team with varying levels of development skills
• Focused on fixed-width dimensions, “pixel-perfect” design
New ways of thinking:
• “What would this look like on mobile?”
• Hit state size for touch
• Thinking in terms of percentages

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Help to close the knowledge gap
• Hold workshops
• Create guides/documentation
• Show them how to design in the browser
• Try not to use the word “education” -
(maybe knowledge sharing?)

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Help to close the knowledge gap
• Learning Responsive Web Design
• Girl Develop It
• Online tutorials
• Show them blogs/resources
http://beaqn.in/webdesign/

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“…I’ve learned that empathy is core to a product team’s ability to move
quickly from designers’ ‘what’ to engineers’ ‘how.’
…when they overcome the communication barrier that separates the
what and the how, good things are certain to come.”
–Michael Abbott
(Hat tip: Matt Baxter)
Source: http://uncapitalized.com/2014/09/24/designers-engineers-empathy-greatness/