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You can make complex web apps responsive

adioso.com

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Re: You can make complex web apps responsive

#11

Post by danso »

k3n wrote: post #5
danso wrote: post #2

Thank you for the comprehensive writeup...even if it can be done , there is still a good amount of skill and knowledge required to pull it off...too often, non-designers underestimate the work and design considerations involved. That said, I wonder if you are going too far in being responsive? The 1000px+ size, IMO, takes the concept of whitespace too far. For example, the third most important datapoint -- the arriva…

> too often, non-designers underestimate the work and design considerations involved. The story of my life! In my entire career as a web developer, the hardest non-technical task I've ever faced is convincing management that we need a designer. I guess they think all they do is come up with some colors or something, because there is never any value given to having someone on-hand that actually knows what they're doin…

Not just design work though, but also content and features work, which pulls in product development and sometimes, infrastructure people. Responsive/mobile design necessarily makes content disappear or moved around, which can substantially change the function of the site.

For example, in Adioso's implementation:

http://adioso.com/us/new-york-new-york-to-rome-it-next-month...

...resizing to the mobile width hides the "Lock Flight" buttons that are normally placed in the far right. So someone had to agree/argue that hiding those buttons was a worthwhile compromise (as opposed to stacking them on the bottom).

Re: You can make complex web apps responsive

#12

Post by Shorel »

mberning wrote: post #6

I'm not sure I would classify this as a 'complex' webapp. Not to downplay the work that has gone on here, which is great, but when I think of a complex web app I think of one that has dozens or hundreds of screens, dozens or hundreds of dialogs, extensive use of user roles/permissions, etc.

OTOH, I believe something like Gmail is far more complex in terms of webapps than something with a thousand boring forms.

Re: You can make complex web apps responsive

#13

Post by JangoSteve »

This is a good writeup. We've started doing the same thing for the startups we've been building, and funny enough, in almost the exact same way, using Zurb Foundation and everything.

We found that, as awesome as Zurb is, it doesn't go quite all the way with its mobile components. It's missing things like full-width padded lists (for fat fingers), and a few other touches. Which is why we just started building foundation-mobile as a plugin for Foundation to add the extra mobile-only interface elements. We have Zurb's support, but we only just started it a couple weeks ago. We're planning an initial release here in the next couple weeks.

Re: You can make complex web apps responsive

#14

Post by zalew »

JangoSteve wrote: post #13

This is a good writeup. We've started doing the same thing for the startups we've been building, and funny enough, in almost the exact same way, using Zurb Foundation and everything. We found that, as awesome as Zurb is, it doesn't go quite all the way with its mobile components. It's missing things like full-width padded lists (for fat fingers), and a few other touches. Which is why we just started building foundati…

nice, followed you, I hope I don't miss it. will it be released on zurb plugins page or only independently?

Re: You can make complex web apps responsive

#15

Post by camus »

mberning wrote: post #6

I'm not sure I would classify this as a 'complex' webapp. Not to downplay the work that has gone on here, which is great, but when I think of a complex web app I think of one that has dozens or hundreds of screens, dozens or hundreds of dialogs, extensive use of user roles/permissions, etc.

if you define complexity by the amount of admin pages, then it is not complex. You can have a basic crud app with 100 pages of CRUD forms, does it make the app "complex" ?

Google Maps has 1 screen ,but all the infrastructure required to make it work is complex, and the code required to display maps is too. That's what a complex app is. Not an app with 100 screens of CRUD, reporting or whatever.

Re: You can make complex web apps responsive

#16

Post by tomhoward »

mberning wrote: post #6

I'm not sure I would classify this as a 'complex' webapp. Not to downplay the work that has gone on here, which is great, but when I think of a complex web app I think of one that has dozens or hundreds of screens, dozens or hundreds of dialogs, extensive use of user roles/permissions, etc.

He meant a rich app with complex interactions, as distinct from a basic text content site.

Re: You can make complex web apps responsive

#17

Post by markdown »

Trufa wrote: post #8

Cool desgin and interesting post, but it's really not worth much if it doesn't find the cheapest flights. http://adioso.com/at/vienna-at-to-ams-june-21-return-june-25 http://web24.checkfelix.com/flugsuche/de/fluege.html?what=re... Maybe it's not so good yet for european flights?

That's way OT. The article has absolutely zero to do with flight pricing, or the content of the website.

It's about making a webapp UI work well across different viewport dimensions using Zurb Foundation.

Re: You can make complex web apps responsive

#18

Post by rickdale »

Just used adioso for the first time. Then I read the post.

From my perspective, it looks cool and all, but the dates load extremely slow and you have to click the right arrow to pick your dates, rather than pop-up calendar, which they also use on a different part of the site and works out better.. Also, I wanted to fly to Vegas, it picked out my local airport and an 8 hour 1 stop trip to Vegas. By selecting an airport just 45 minutes farther from me, there are 4 hour flights to Vegas. But it didn't suggest those flights for me, it just took my location by default (from IP) and then shot out the 8 hour flights.

I don't know, I dont like the design. Too much fluff, not enough ease.

Re: You can make complex web apps responsive

#19

Post by mberning »

Shorel wrote: post #12
mberning wrote: post #6

I'm not sure I would classify this as a 'complex' webapp. Not to downplay the work that has gone on here, which is great, but when I think of a complex web app I think of one that has dozens or hundreds of screens, dozens or hundreds of dialogs, extensive use of user roles/permissions, etc.

OTOH, I believe something like Gmail is far more complex in terms of webapps than something with a thousand boring forms.

It depends on what those forms do.

I think we both can agree that something like Gmail is much more complex than what was presented in the article.

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