Adobe Muse Media Queries Responsive Design

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Adobe's Creative Cloud-based Muse web design and website layout package, contains some exciting responsive web design tools. And while they're very useful, they can seem overwhelming at first. Here are some hints and tips for getting started.

Responsive tools

Let's take a quick look at some of the tools for responsive design. The first one is easily overlooked (see image below).

Found on the very bottom of the left side tool pallet, this setting determines whether the text editing you are doing will effect the text box just in the current breakpoint ('Format text on current breakpoint', the single 'T' icon), or if it will effect all Breakpoint instances of the text box being edited (Format text across breakpoints', the multiple 'T' icon).

Keep this option in mind before you touch a text box. In most cases it is a lot safer to leave it set to effect just a single breakpoint. Turn it on to effect all zones if the text box is set to act responsively, see next section.

Responsive text and text boxes

Much of all publishing work is about formatting text. Or 'massaging' it if we want to be artsy. The web has always made that harder than print, and responsiveness adds even more twists and turns. One might think that you should be able to click on all the 'responsive' settings for everything and – whoopee! – life would be great.

Well Muse does give us that option, we just have to learn to use it properly. Resize menus can be found both at the top of the screen, and by right-clicking on a page object. This option is available for both images and text boxes, though they are obviously treated differently.

Set a text box to 'Responsive Width' and Muse will change its width proportionally with that of the browser's width. This sounds like a good thing, and it can be for many situations.

But for we control freaks, it adds yet another variable that might mess up our vision. The thing to keep in mind is that we now have other toolsets to address these issues as well – for example, breakpoints. So rather than setting a text box to be responsive, instead keep its width locked and modify it as needed in each of the various breakpoint zones you create.

Adobe Muse Media Queries Responsive Design Pdf

Essentially, this is almost like treating each breakpoint as if it was a fixed page, like we have done with the desktop, tablet and mobile pages in previous versions of Muse. This just seems like a 'best of both worlds' way to work. Though it is more labour intensive than choosing the Responsive Width option and letting things go.

Generally speaking, we will always need more control over our headlines than over our body text. So while most body text can be set to Responsive Width, I'm less inclined to do that with the headlines without a lot of testing. Instead, the headlines are perhaps best handled by relying on breakpoints. But this all depends on the design. Remember: test, test, test.

Pinning vs responsive positioning

In addition to a responsive text block width, if not pinned in one way or another, Muse will also responsively shift the horizontal placement of an item on the page. This is a great thing, when it works.

I have noted that when changing the browser width, some items placed in the dead-centre go awry. My solution is to pin it to the centre, as seen here. Again, testing is your friend.

Variables per breakpoint

With all of Muse's responsive tools, the heavy hammer is of course the breakpoint controls. Each new breakpoint allows the designer to start with a fresh canvas, at least if needed. Granted, this is not the way you want to work. Ideally, you would flow as smoothly as possible from one browser width to another.

In fact, ideally you would rely mostly on the responsive controls listed above, and only use breakpoints as a last-ditch solution, when other solutions won't work. Theoretically you could create a responsive site with only one full-width breakpoint and have all the elements scale automatically. Granted, this would probably necessitate it being a rather simplistic site. In any case, you probably want to try and have as few breakpoints in a project as you can.

But as a fail-safe, breakpoints can be used gently, or with brute force. Gentle use involves waiting until page elements begin to break, then creating a new breakpoint width where you fix that element. Brute force techniques involve completely removing a page object that exists in one breakpoint zone (you can right-click to 'Hide in Breakpoint' or 'Hide in other Breakpoints'), and replacing it with a new item in another zone. Or perhaps just removing an item altogether as the browser width narrows.

For more granular tips and insights, visit this page on Adobe's site.

Page testing tips

Now let's take a look at some ways you can test your page to check your responsive designs are working as you intended.

Let's start with a tiny one. Preview doesn't let you test responsiveness; the only option is to use the Scrubber control, which is part of the breakpoint ensemble. Of course, this is in the layout window so you will not see a real preview of many functions. Instead, get used to using the keyboard commands for for page preview (cmd+shift+E), and for full site preview (cmd+alt+E).

By placing an identifier on the page of each breakpoint zone, you can identify which zone you need to make changes to. I simply make a text box for each zone with the pixel width value of that zone.

Make sure each identifying text is only visible in its proper breakpoint. And also make sure to turn them all off before you publish. An easy setup would be to create a new layer for all labels. Then you can simply turn them all off with one button.

One other thing to note: keep the tag really, really small and away from other items whose positioning could accidentally be effected.

Queries

As can be seen in the image above, I have added a breakpoint tag to each zone. Now I can easily see which zones have issues I need to address. In this example we can see that the narrower version of '768' needs some tweaking.

If the text boxes can be fixed to work well across the entire zone, then great. If not then we might want to consider adding another breakpoint to deal with it independently. Another option: expanding the zone we call '550' to encompass the problem, might just solve it.

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- I'd like to first start off by giving youa good understanding of what responsive design is.Well, what is responsive design?Simply put, responsive design is just a wayof building webpages or websites that detectthe visitor's screen size and orientation,among other things, which then changes the layoutand content accordingly.But the great thing is, is it doesn't haveto change the content.I can use the same content, it just gets formatteddifferently and more appropriatelyfor the device it's displaying on.

So that's what makes it really powerful.Now, a responsive design approach might useflexible layouts, flexible images, and then media querieswhich are probably the most common when it comesto responsive design.Media queries are just Cascading Style Sheet modulethat allows content to adapt to these various conditions.So that's what it's technically known as is media queries.And we can dive into this,but really since it's the cornerstoneof responsive design, that's why I wantedto point out media queries.

But it's more commonly known as breakpoints.So in Adobe Muse CC 2015 it's known as breakpoints.Real easy to work with.In fact, you can see the screenshot here.That purple bar at the top, well that's a 1280 breakpoint,otherwise known as a media query because that CSSgets written sort of behind the scenes.So if we scale down that screen we end upwith something like this, so it's 785.You can see how the layout changes a little bit differently.It's more of a flexible, fluid layout.

And at this point we have this breakpoint at 640 for mobile.So content gets hidden and other content is revealedas well just as easily.Now let's take a look at screen sizes now that we knowhow breakpoints are added.Screen sizes vary widely.Now I'm actually on a monitor that's 1360 by 768,but it really runs the gamut if you're on a desktopmachine like an iMac.You can get into the Macbook Pro retina displays,default is 1440 by 900 and you can change that as well.

Responsive media queries

And then you can get into Macbook Airs for instance.And again I'm just covering one platform by the way.And you can see that's an even different size.But overall, out of all of those you can start to seea size emerge, 1280 by 720 which is pretty common.We know that as a sort of good base resolution.And then just think about how you sort of navigatewebsites and use your web browser.Are you always displaying content full screen?You might always be.So, 1280 by 720 is good to just remember for desktop.Now we can go into smartphones,and we have a number of them out there.

I can just start, say for instance, with the iPhone 4which plenty of them out there, 640 by 960.And then we have this orientation that's happening,960 by 640.So what happens to our content when the phonegets rotated like that.And then what happens when they upgrade to the iPhone 5?So, 640 by 1136, all right?iPhone 6s, 6 and 6s actually, 750 by 1334.And I'm not even getting into these retina displays,sort of these high dpi devices as well,because it's effectively like doubling the pixels.

So our graphics have the opportunity to look really crisp.So we want to make sure we have a responsive images.And I'll show you how to do that.But even as we dive into the iPhone 6 plus,even larger, almost the size of a desktopin terms of resolution it's really wild.And I didn't even get into all of the various Androiddevices and other platforms out there.But I just wanted to show you how it runs the gamut.And again you start to see sort of a base size emerge,640 by 960 is roughly the size that any decent phoneis at these days.

But you can go to an older phone, smartphone that is,240 by 320, okay.So that's what's going on,and we want to remember these things.We also want to get into tablets, iPad 3we can look at that size.Pretty much the resolution of a desktopand then we need to remember that if they rotatethe iPad what does that content look like?And just think about how you might use your smartphoneor a tablet, and that will be a good indicationof how you should build your content.And we can get into iPad mini again, 768 by 1024.

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So you should start to feel a little overwhelmedbecause there are so many screens, okay?And I didn't even get into the Android screens, okay?So, apologize for that, but it's going to be moreof the same running the gamut.But in general we'll start to see 1024 by 768 emerge.And then we've got to remember the horizontal orientationof it as well.So either way we have to remember 1024 in this case.Then we can dive into sort of the common sizes.What have we learned?Well, the common sizes for a phone might be 640 by 960.

There is also a 320 by 240, that's the bare minimum.But that's what I'm going to remember in general.Tablets, 1024 by 768, and then desktop about 1280 by 720.So this is what I'm just going to rememberin the back of my head as I'm building out my content.But these sizes could determine wherethere are breakpoints.That's pretty much a given.I could remember that and say okay,here are all my breakpoints.Notice that if you accommodated for every single device,you would have so many breakpointsit would be unmanageable.

That's why I just offered up the most common sizes.Now when it comes to determining breakpoints,a better practice is actually keep in mindthose common sizes that I just mentioned,but let the content determine where there are breakpoints.So if a design starts to look bad at a certain sizeregardless of what devices are out there,I want to make sure my content looks goodregardless of the screen that it's on.So that's the goal even in this case.We want to make sure that it looks goodas we dive into these different sizesregardless of where they're at.

They could be common sizes,but they might not be necessarily,even if you take a look at 785.Well that's not a resolution we looked at,but I needed to change it at that breakpoint sizein order for my content to look good.And then the common size of 640.All right, this also helps us design for the futurebecause when we let the content determinewhere the breakpoints are, we're safeguarding usfor any new devices that come out in the hopesthat it will look good regardless of what's in the future.

And consider how usage changes across devices.So we have different cases for smartphones and tablets.Well, chances are we need to make buttonslarge enough to touch with a finger.So think about your finger size.It's about 40 pixels by 40 pixels roughly.We want to make it big enough to where youcan actually click on any option available.Also for tablets we want to make sure the contrastis sufficient to read in bright light, even in low light.So you just increase the contrast.You can't leave a lot of room for subtlybecause it will start to get lost on the mobile.

And lastly, consider the bandwidth, okay?Now we might have a high bandwidth connectionat home, but that's not necessarily the caseof course, as you're traveling aroundon your smartphone and tablet.But either way, you want to have your contentlook good on desktop, on your tablet device,and then formatted correctly as well.You can see this little, it's called a hamburger if you willis the slang term for that menu option there.So large enough to click and expand that menu.And you can easily select any one of thoseadditional options.The nice thing is that Adobe Muse makes it easyto create content that looks and works greatacross devices.

So I'm really excited about this course.Let's go ahead and dive right on.