“I want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!” – Ralphie to Santa

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Happy Birthday Brandon!

Brandon with his girlfriend, Olivia.

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Merry Christmas from the Whitbeck family. We hope you enjoyed your Christmas around your loved ones.

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These are my personal notes from the Thinking Responsively Online seminar with Ben Callahan, President of SparkBox.

In the US, 52% of laptop owners also own a smartphone
23% also own a tablet
13% own a laptop, smartphone, and laptop
The penetration of desktop & laptop ownership is the same as it was in 2007
Projected this year, more people will be on mobile then desktop

People are trying to browse your sites on these devices, today

Responsive Web Design article on A List Apart

Three Core Techniques

• A Fluide Foundation
• Flexible Foundation
• Media Queries

Fluid Foundations

Think in percentages

Flexible Foundation

Once the layout responds fluidly, the content must also respond

Can also size images via percentages

Media Queries

Being able to query against the width size to be able to

A Shift in Mindset

Traditional Linear workflow

Design -> Front-end -> Backend -> Launch

Then you add Think About users

Then add Content

Slightly Better linear Workflow

Content -> UX -> Design -> Front-end -> Back-end -> Launch!

When you throw RWD into the process?

Front-end now comes with RWD

Then add it to Design and Backend

This doesn’t work

Need to invite others into the process

A Responsive Workflow

Disciplines

• UX
• Design
• Front-end
• Back-end
• Content

Collaborative Timeline

with/differing cycles that never ends

Pros

• Natural Decisions
• Encourages Collaboration
• Encourages Iteration
• Better Results

Cons

• Requires Change
• May Conflict with Organizational Structure
• Dependent on Team Make-up
  • Can’t have the rockstar web designer/programmer, needs collaboration

How do we do this?

A Shift in Process

Deliverables that best serve the organization and prioritization of content and function across multiple resolutions.

Our Deliverables

• Research Deliverables
• Content Deliverables
• Priority Deliverables
• Style Deliverables
• Functional Deliverables

Today we’ll focus on Priority, Style

Priority Deliverables

Content Priority Prototypes

• Takes the place of a traditional wireframe
• As much real content as you can
• Linear in nature, priority implied.
• Possibly created in HTML, viewed in browser
• Generated by Content/UX people

Style Deliverables

Style Prototype

• Like Style Tiles, but in the browser
• Very fast to build
• Accurate web typography
• Easy to show web interaction
• Client review in their browser of preference

Use What the Project Needs

A Responsive Project requires a Responsive Process

Lessons Learned

Pricing varies but is getting better

(compared to a fixed width desktop site)

• As much as 100% more, initially
• Likely to be 50% more, soon after
• Probably never less than 25% more

If you compare this pricing vs Desktop and Mobile and Native applications then it’s a wash.

Reasons for higher costs

• Testing (labs & time)
• Fewer patterns
• Project management
  • Client Education
• Learning curve
• Maintenance
• Content strategy

Testing

• You must Test on real devices
• Do your development in a webkit browser
• Build libraries of your patterns

Barriers

• Organization barriers block collaboration
• Must have buy in from upper management
• Must have buy in from those doing the work
• It’s not easy, we’re still figuring it out

Performance

• Optimize or cut out images
• Decrease the number of requests
• Gzip if you can
• Concat and minify CSS/JS
• Load CSS at the top
• Load JS at the bottom
• Follow @souders on Twitter

“Don’t blame the technique blame the implementation”

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Yesterday, while I was on Facebook, I noticed something that really made me cringe. Right there on my screen was almost a complete history of what sites I’ve been to and products I looked at. But this wasn’t a history page or anything like that this was the suggested ads. Facebook tracks everything you do and with the social graph plugins that every site is installing they are able to track what ever you do on third-party sites as well, even when you’re not logged in.

In addition, there are many ad networks that are tracking what you do online so that they can also target you with ads. I can navigate to many other sites and see those same ads there as well. The other day me and my coworkers we’re looking at bar tables and stools for a conference booth on Overstock.com. For the last two days I’ve seen ads on almost every site I’ve been that include those exact products from Overstock.com. For one, I’ve already been to the site and looked at that product I don’t need you throwing back in my face ever other click. And two, browser history based ads are just creepy.

But the complete history for the last month was the final straw for me. I went and started “Googling” for how to stop ad tracking. Here is what I found:

Opting-out of Google Ads tracking

1. Login to your Google Account.
2. Click on view and edit your ad preferences.
3. On this page you can see what information is being shared by Google.
4. You can opt-out at the bottom of the page.

Change your search engine

If you really care about your privacy, you’ll switch from Google, Bing or Yahoo search engine to DuckDuckGo. Why do you want to do this? Well I’ll let DuckDuckGo explain why you should search anonymously. DuckDuckGo promises that they don’t “Filter” the results based on your likes or interests and won’t share the search term with the third-party web site.

You can make DuckDuckGo your default search in Chrome by going to your settings, click on “Manage search engines…” and then set up a new entry for DuckDuckGo.

• Enter DuckDuckGo in the search engine field
• Enter ddg.gg in the keyword field
• Enter https://duckduckgo.com?q=%s in the url field
• Click Done
• Go back into the “Manage search engines…” and hover over DuckDuckGo and click on “Make Default”

Now when you do a search in the address bar it will send the query to DuckDuckGo instead of Google.

Fix Tracking

Another site that DuckDuckGo maintains is fixtracking.com. This is a set of recommended Browser extensions that will help you navigate the web without being tracked. I installed the following extensions and recommendations listed for Google Chrome:

• DoNotTrackMe Chrome Extension – blocks ad network cookies from being installed so they can’t track you.
• HTTPS Everywhere Chrome Extension – Will try to change the URL to the https version if available automatically.
• I unchecked all the privacy options under the Privacy section except the “Do Not Track” option, although it seems that has no effect.
• Privacy Fix Chrome Extension – This is an extension which will look through privacy option in Google, Facebook, Linked In, etc and walk you through how to set those options to better protect yourself.
• Adblock Plus Chrome Extension – Blocks ads
  • I also found and installed an Adblock Plus Subscription called Facebook Privacy List which will block Facebook plugins and scripts throughout the web.

Conclusion

With the revelation of the NSA spying program and table that with “targeted ads” I just want my privacy back. The amount of data being collected on you is mounting steadily. I’d like my web activity to be as anonymous as possible if I can so control it. I am sure these measures I listed above are only blocking a part of the data being sent but at least I am fighting it in some way.

Photo credit (Internet Privacy Venn Diagram): Dave Hoffman (Flickr)

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