I’m excited to announce that I’m going to be teaching a workshop on responsive web design (RWD) for DC Web Women’s Code(Her) series, on August 14 at 6:00 p.m. in Washington, DC.

You have probably been wondering: What is this “responsive web design” thing that people keep talking about, and how is it different than the way we learned to make websites back in the good ol’ days?

Come to my workshop and find out the answer!

I’ll show you examples of websites that are currently using RWD to do awesome things, and explain how they’re doing it. We’ll talk about fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries. I’ll explain “responsive workflow” and tell you how you can adapt your design and development process to accommodate RWD.

The workshop is hands-on, so bring your laptop and we’ll go through an exercise of converting a fixed-width layout to a responsive layout. You’ll need to have at least a basic understanding of HTML and CSS to do this part. If you don’t have a laptop, don’t worry, you can look on with someone else.

And I saved the best part for last: there will be pizza! Come at 6:00 for the food, and I’ll start talking at 6:30.

The workshop will be at LivingSocial’s Hungry Academy space near McPherson Square. You need to register ahead of time so go do that right now before you forget, or before it fills up and you miss the most awesome RWD event of the year.

They say you can’t get anything for free. That may be true, but if you’ve already paid for something with your tax dollars, you may as well take advantage, right?

Libraries, for instance. You can find a book on pretty much any subject imaginable, and after showing less documentation than is required to vote in many places, you get to take books home! As many as you want! Okay, there’s usually a limit on how many you can check out at once, but it tends to coincide with the number of books you can physically carry without tipping over, so it works out well.

And then there are ebooks. Also free from your local library, but highly underused and underappreciated. And you don’t even need to leave your house to get them.

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There’s a bit of a cognitive dissonance between going to conferences like An Event Apart where I learn about all the amazing things the mobile web is now capable of — and then going to a conference like last week’s Wikimania where I learned that the most common mobile phone operating system in the world is Nokia Series 40 (S40), which doesn’t have the capability to do most of those amazing things.

A new report released yesterday by the World Bank tells us that about 75% of the world’s inhabitants now have access to a mobile phone. And amazingly, more than 80% of current mobile subscriptions are in developing countries.

But most of the users in developing countries are accessing the web very differently than most of you reading this. If you’re designing a website that could potentially have a global reach, it’s necessary to take into account the types of devices these users have, the speed of their networks, and how the cost of data influences the way they access the mobile web. Read more ›

The past couple days I’ve been wishing I was in Boston, where some of the greatest minds in the web design world are gathered in one building, plotting to overthrow the — I mean, sharing their wisdom with the masses at An Event Apart. Meanwhile, I’m sitting at my desk, trying to concentrate on my work, but I’m feeling myself getting a little sleepy, and…

Wait, what is this? It’s 2022! How did that happen? Am I dreaming? What a strange world this is, ten years in the future. Mobile devices are ubiquitous. In fact, they aren’t even called mobile devices anymore, because everything is mobile! Desktop computers are now kept in museums next to the telegraph machines, and you can barely remember the days when your computer was stuck at your desk and your internet access was attached to something called “wi-fi.”

Talking about the mobile web in 2022 is like calling your car a mobile car. Of course it’s mobile, so you don’t have to say it. It’s a post-mobile world…..

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