Nobody had even heard of a smartphone when we first got the Internet at my house. Many websites were still designed with a web safe color palette of 216 colors and tiled backgrounds were the cool, new kid on the block. A MIDI and a scrolling marquee gave you street–or at least Internet–cred. In those days, the web was wild.
Fast forward to today–the web has completely transformed. Thanks to web standards and CSS, designers have been given increasing control over a website’s look and feel. Websites are now able to have actual aesthetic appeal, and, more importantly, these designs are now able to adapt to the various types of media they can be displayed on.
Since the iPhone and Android arrived, smartphone sales have skyrocketed. In fact, the adoption rate of this new class of phones has dramatically outpaced that of any previous technology. Experts predict that in 3 to 5 years, mobile web access will eclipse desktop web access. The mobile web is the exciting, new frontier.
Luckily, these phones actually have decent web browsers. This enables web designers to deliver very rich web experiences to mobile devices.
At Gustavus we have taken the first steps at making our website flexible enough to work well on a phone. This week, we began implementing some new stylesheets that should make most of our pages work pretty well on phones. Desktop users shouldn’t notice any difference (unless they shrink their browser windows way down), and mobile users will be able to have a more usable website. This is called responsive web design. And, in responsive web design, everybody wins.
However, since mobile is a new space for us, some adjusting will need to happen along the way. If you happen to notice a page that could use a little extra attention or just want to tell us what you think, please let us know–leave a comment here, click on the red feedback button on any page, or send an email to web@gustavus.edu.
Happy browsing!
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