Responsive Design - A comment on "Missing The Point"

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I just read an interesting article on Responsive Web Design, something that we try to build into our sites here at TTD Towers. The point, as far as I can see, of the article is that sites should be device agnostic. That means that sites should not judge what hardware or software is used to access information or services, but should adapt themselves to the available resources. That could be big screen / small screen, fast connection / slow connection etc.

The commentors, referencing a second article linked in the original have instead got hooked on the sound bite:

If you could only do one thing to prepare your desktop site for mobile and had to choose between employing media queries to make it look good on a mobile device or optimizing the site for performance, you would be better served by making the desktop site blazingly fast.

Rubbish I tell you.

And why is that? Well, for the plain and simple reason that if you aren't optimising your sites to the Nth degree, you have failed web 101. I've been approaching each GIF from the ground up, shrinking them and reducing their colour palettes since before most web designers were out of short trousers. Building small, optimised HTML, CSS and JS hand in hand with highly optimised graphics where required - that doesn't need to be said does it? You don't think you win at Web Design if you don't do that? It doesn't need stating, it's a given.

So:

Yes - Responsive Design is here, it's staying, it's required. It's another thing we need to do, another step to complicate web site design and development, but another step to simplify and improve the lives of our users and that is always the point.

The Tall Designer and Charlee Says Offer New Discount for Vegetarian Society Members

Member of the Vegetarian Society? Get 10% off all our web design, social media and content writing services

We've never been partial to keeping our mouths shut about something we believe in, so you've probably seen our often passionate and sometimes inflammatory tweets and Facebook updates about vegetarianism. Now we've decided to put our money where our big mouth is, which means that all fellow members of the Vegetarian Society get a cruelty-free 10% off our services, which include web design, web copywriting, content writing services and brand development. Just tell us your Vegetarian Society number when you make an enquiry and we'll sort out the discount (and high five you for saving the animals and their little faces).

Miles' web design services got a mention in last month's issue of the Vegetarian Society magazine, and Charlee's writing services will be in this month's, so keep an eye out for her if you're a subscriber.

Not a Veggie Yet?

Never fear. You can still get a high five from us: why not start with Meat Free Monday and make one change that will benefit your health and the environment?

Refusing to work for a business that sells Foie Gras.

Foie Gras, most right minded people agree, is a barbaric practice that should be outlawed. Quite how we've got to the 21st century without being horrified that it ever existed, let alone still exists, I can't understand. However - that's not the point of this post. The point is that my personal brand, and my business brand is very closely interlinked. I'm a "Passionate Vegetarian" as my Twitter profile says, I could no more work for a business that sold Foie Gras than I could work for a slaughter house. My personal beliefs blur across to my business life (they go in the other direction too).

I'm proud to say that when we were approached by a German online food shop to do some work on their site, we checked their ethical standing and immediately found it wanting. We refused the work, as we'd refuse it from anyone with questionable ethics.

This stance isn't just about Foie Gras, or indeed about the meat industry. Although as a vegetarian of course I'd rather nobody ate meat, I understand that I live in a world where plenty of people do, and that there are ethical approaches to the selling of meat products that do not include cruel and unusual treatment of livestock.

This stance is actually about ethical businesses. By refusing to work with businesses with poor animal welfare policies, unethical business practices, "dark Pattern" interfaces, sub standard products, or anything else, we can hold our heads up high and say:

"We're proud of who we are, what we do, and who we do it for".

Achieving Inbox 0 with my Mac and Omnifocus for Mac/iPad/iPhone a Getting Things Done process for Mail.app

You know I even keep a list of blog subjects and have a weekly reminder to post? Do I do a weekly blog post? No. Suppose I should be glad of being so busy. Anyway - "Inbox 0" a noble aim and one that in my own way, I achieve every day. This is how I do it, you may want to change things to fit. It works very well with Dave Allen's GTD process and perfectly fits the sweep process of bin it, file it, do it if it takes less than 2 minutes or put it in your task inbox.

Requirements:

  • A Mac using Mail.app with a "Smartfolder" set up to filter in all unread mail.
  • Omnifocus for Mac
  • Omnifocus for iPad
  • Omnifocus for iPhone
Process from my Mac.
I only ever look at my Smart Mailbox, not my actual inbox. When that Smart Mailbox says (0) next to it, I'm at Inbox Zero. So I'm looking at the folder, an email comes in, or, maybe I've been working on something else with Mail.app hidden, I come back in and there's 10 things in the box, I do one of these things.
  • Is it Spam? Delete it
  • Is it a notification I don't need now I've read it? Delete it.
  • Is it a notification I need to keep even though I've read it? (receipts, booking confirmations etc.) move onto the next email, now the email is "read" it won;t appear in the Smart Mailbox anymore, ergo it's dropped straight into "filed" without me needing to do anything.
  • Do I need to do something with the email that takes less than 120 seconds - do it now, sub decision, do I need to keep this email still? If so, move onto the next email, this one will be marked as "read" and drop out of the Smart Folder. If I don;t need to keep it, I hit delete immediately after actioning.
  • Do I need to do something with the email and it will take more than 120 seconds? I Highlight some text in the email that will remind me what it is, hit my shortcut Cmd-Shift-comma, Omnifocus pops up ready populated, I just hit enter. The text & a link to the email is dropped in my Getting Things Done bucket.
Process from my iPad / iPhone
You Can't have smart mailboxes on either iPhones or iPads, shame. Omnifocus also isn;t anywhere near as well integrated (Apple's fault, not Omni) So instead I do this.
  • Is it Spam? Delete it
  • Is it a notification I don't need now I've read it? Delete it.
  • Is it a notification I need to keep even though I've read it? (receipts, booking confirmations etc.) move onto the next email, now the email is "read" it won't appear in the Smart Mailbox on my Mac anymore, ergo it's dropped straight into "filed" without me needing to do anything.
  • Do I need to do something with the email that takes less than 120 seconds - do it now, sub decision, do I need to keep this email still? If so, move onto the next email, this one will be marked as "read" and drop out of the Smart Folder (on my Mac). If I don't need to keep it, I hit delete immediately after actioning.
  • Do I need to do something with the email and it will take more than 120 seconds? I Highlight some text in the email that will remind me what it is, hit "copy", switch over to Omnifocus for phone/pad, hit new, paste the text right in and hit "go". The text  is dropped in my Getting Things Done bucket. This isn;t as good as you no longer have a direct link to the email itself, but it's better than nothing at all and as long as you copy the right text, you'll know what it's about.
A few supporting actions that help this go well.
  • Every week I have a repeating task in Omnifocus to quickly run through the last few days of emails in my actual inbox, not the Smart Mailbox. I use this to delete any emails that I don't need that may have dropped through the net.
  • Every time I get an email that's non specific, say a newsletter etc. I think if I need to keep receiving it, if not I hit unsubscribe in an attempt to keep my email inbox to a minimum.
  • The search function in Mail.App - is FANTASTIC. No really it is. You don't need to obsessively categorise things, there's no need. When you can type, for example, from:Miles into the search box and you get every email from Miles, or subject:dinner - why go to all that effort to manually categorise anything?
So. It works well for me - how do you do things? Any ideas on how to improve things? Look forward to your thoughts.