Responsive Web Design – Challenges and Scope for Future

The year 2013 has been dubbed as 'The Year of Responsive Web'. The technology, though still in its nascent form, has taken the world by storm, and is catalyzing a major change change in the way people access information, even as we speak. With the numbers of hand held devices being sold increasing every year (Tablet sales are expected to exceed 100 million this year – Mashable.com), website owners are keener than ever to have websites that will provide a good user experience across all platforms. While the technology might still seem formidable to some due to the fact that it is new and still evolving, it certainly is the way forward for those looking to stay on top.

As the name suggests, Responsive Web Design is the design approach for building websites where-in the code would recognize the device accessing the website and scale the components according to it. For example, the contents and images that are used to load a website on the desktop would get scaled down when the website is viewed from a smart phone. The major advantages of RWD are:

Same code base to load on all platforms.

This makes development simpler and changes easier to incorporate, for otherwise, writing separate codes for each platform would make the code base humongous and difficult to maintain

Better SEO Benefits

When you load the same website with the same URL linking to the same HTML, with only the CSS changing for each device, you derive better SEO results. The same URL will show up on Google searches on all platforms. If there were more than one URLs for different platforms, it might confuse and irk the users since they might end up clicking on the URL meant for a smart phone, on a desktop device. In fact, even Google, the mother of all search engines recommends RWD for websites for a better Google ranking.

However, the one-size-fits-all solution is not always perfect and not without limitations. Some of the major challenges that developers and users alike face with RWD are -

Performance and Speed

Since mobile internet is almost always not as fast as a wired connection, the website loading times on hand held devices might continue to be lower. This is also accentuated by the fact that the a large amount of code still needs to be sent to the device before the application can recognize it and use the code required for that device alone. These factors can greatly bring down the loading speed and thus not give as good a user experience and RWD is supposed to give.

Complexity

Embracing RWD as an approach can be quite a complex process if not handled with diligent planning and some creative designing. Web developers and business owners need to be very clear about what they want the users to see on their websites, when viewed through a desktop or a tablet or a smart phone. Some features that look great on desktop might not work on other devices, and the design should be carried out in such a way that the website looks and feels great on every platform. All this can greatly increase the complexity of creating a responsive website.

The Future

While RWD has entered with a bang and made a comfortable place for itself amongst the most happening technologies of the day, for it to grow further, efforts need to be made to make it more easy and light. One step in that direction is the emergence of RESS, which is defined as a “responsive website with server side detection.” In simple words, with this technique, detection and recognition of the device making a call to the website is transferred to the server side, instead of the client side. The server finds out whether it is a tablet or a PC requesting the website, and send only the code pertaining to that platform to the client. Therefore, the code traveling to the device is largely reduced, and so is the time spent by the device in loading it. And so, better performance and more simplicity!

Resources
http://www.bluetrainmobile.com/blog/the-next-generation-of-responsive-web-design-ress/#.UpQ06NTtmGU
http://inspiredm.com/creating-the-future-of-mobile-responsive-web-design/ http://www.technologybell.com/what-is-role-of-responsive-web-design-in-mobile-seo-strategy/ http://mashable.com/2012/12/11/responsive-web-design/

Read more »

Making a Smooth Segue from SharePoint 2010 to 2013

SharePoint 2013 comes with some slick features and amazing capabilities no doubt, but an upgrade from a previous version of SharePoint to a new one is always fraught with risks. Upgrading from SharePoint 2010 to 2013 is no different in this regard. The upgrade has to be carried out with a lot of planning and monitoring, so that one does not face errors or lose out on some functionality due to compatibility issues, or customization differences.

Why Upgrading to SharePoint 2013 is Worthwhile?

SharePoint 2013 comes with some cutting edge tools and developments that make a user's SharePoint experience all the more enriching and productive. Some of its great features are -

·         Design Manager – A whole new array of web-based tools to design your pages, templates and styles.

·         Device Channels – This provides a way for SharePoint developers to design and define pages for various devices – androids, windows phones, iPhones or surface.

·         Cross Platform Portability – 2013 comes with a lot of cool features like HTML5, CSS3 etc., which make the availability of application across devices and browsers a cakewalk.

·         Community Portal – A site for SharePoint developers and users to come together and connect, within the organization.

Challenges Encountered in Upgrade from 2010 to 2013

The sea change in design between SharePoint 2010 and 2013 means that a lot of things that worked in 2010 will no longer work in 2013. That is to say, they would need to be rebuilt to work the same way they did previously or adopted to work in a new and better way in the newer version. Some of the major challenges you might encounter are -

Branding

When upgrading from SharePoint 2010 to 2013, you are bound to lose all your customized branding. That is because 2013 uses HTML5, which is built to work on all platforms, browsers and devices. Since 2010 does not allow such a flexibility, the customization done in 2010 will not be compatible to 2013 and one would need to rebuild the whole branding experience from scratch. The facts that Web parts no longer uses tables, and XSLT has been replaced by Design Templates also mean that the look and feel of content in SharePoint 2013 will be so different from that in SharePoint 2010. Hence branding would need to be made afresh to suit the features present in 2013.

Search

The changes in Search functionality in SharePoint 2013 from 2010 are perhaps the most significant in the new version. For one, Search Scopes does not exist anymore. Which is to say, the scopes you created in 2010 will be brought over to 2013 on successful migration, but you will not be able to create new scopes. Instead, 2013 now offers a feature called Result Sources which stores the previous search results you have accessed so that you do not have to search for them all over again. Since SharePoint 2013 used FAST search in combination with the upgraded Enterprise Search 2010, architectural changes will be necessary both at Search Site level and configuration level.

Authentication

SharePoint 2013 uses Claims mode authentication as a default, as opposed to 2010 which has classic mode. Hence if you had been running 2010 on classic mode, without having upgraded to claims, then you would be left with no choice but to upgrade since classic mode will not work any longer.

To Do or Not To Do

That might sound a bit like Hamlet, but that is a question that an organization needs to ponder over seriously before embarking on an upgrade. If for instance, it runs on a heavily customized 2010 version, it might be wiser to leave it as it is since the rework required in migration might actually belie any benefits it might accrue. However, on the other hand, if the 'cool' features of the 2013 version are sure to bring immense positive benefits to the organization, the effort might actually be justified by the end result. Organizations need to weigh all their options before deciding upon an upgrade.

Read more »