Learning Responsive Web Design: A Beginner’s Guide

Learning Responsive Web Design

Order Learning Responsive Web Design

Learning Responsive Web Design is now available from:

You can also read this book on O’Reilly Online Learning.

About the Book

Deliver an optimal user experience to all devices—including tablets, smartphones, feature phones, laptops, and large screens—by learning the basics of responsive web design. In this hands-on guide, UX designer Clarissa Peterson explains how responsive web design works, and takes you through a responsive workflow from project kickoff to site launch.

Ideal for anyone involved in the process of creating websites—not just developers—this book teaches you fundamental strategies and techniques for using HTML and CSS to design websites that not only adapt to any screen size, but also use progressive enhancement to provide a better user experience based on device capabilities such as touchscreens and retina displays.

  • Start with content strategy before creating a visual design
  • Learn why your default design should be for the narrowest screens
  • Explore the HTML elements and CSS properties essential for responsive web design
  • Use media queries to display different CSS styles based on a device’s viewport width
  • Handle elements such as images, typography, and navigation
  • Use performance optimization techniques to make your site lighter and faster

To see in more detail what topics are covered in the book, you can view the Table of Contents.

If you are an instructor who is considering using Learning Responsive Web Design or other O’Reilly books in your classroom, you can request a free review copy.

About the Author

Clarissa Peterson is a digital technology leader and educator. As Strategy Director at Forum One, she defines strategic vision and provides oversight for user experience and content strategy. Clarissa frequently speaks at tech and design conferences, and she creates online courses for sites such as LinkedIn Learning. She is also the author of Learning Responsive Web Design: A Beginner’s Guide (O’Reilly Media). She is based in Chicago.

Example Code from the Book

If you have the book and want to see how the two example websites from the book respond to changes in viewport size (without having to type in all the code yourself), you can view the example sites as they appear in each step throughout the book. They are listed by the corresponding figure number of each screenshot.

View the code for the example websites