Google, with their latest redesign of Google+ featured a fully responsive design. With it came many successes, they hit their goal of never downloading over 60K of HTML, Javascript or CSS at one time. Such successes were driven by the challenges presented in the original version(s) of Google+ and required unique solutions. Going from two different version of the Google+ website (designed for old browsers) to one, couldn’t have been easy.
Google recently shared on their Google Developers showcase section their case study on making Google+ completely responsive.
The Challenges
- Having two version of the site, meant double implementation which resulted in duplicate code
- Developing for multiple experiences, blurred the lines between desktop and mobile
- The added feature made the desktop version slow and heavy, with an weight of about 5MB
- Slow and unstable networks
- Support for legacy browsers kept developers from relying on JavaScript
- Lack of interactive features
Google is great at setting the example for revolutionary web development, and sharing their experiences for others to benefit from. Visit the Google developers site to read the solutions Google came up with and how they managed to focus on responsive design.
Good article. Wish they had gone into more detail regarding the framework, but I suppose they can’t give away all their secrets!