Responsive vs Adaptive PW approach

[zilli]

Hello,

I've being doing responsive websites for a while, and since all the work is done on the front-end(browser) no PW interaction was needed. Now I need to build an adaptive website. For adaptive websites the heavy lift is done in the backend(server). So, it means that PW will have part of it.

However, I don't have a clue of how to do it. I would appreciate any insights.

Thank you,

Zilli

[LostKobrakai]

What exactly do you mean by adaptive? For me adaptive means just a less fluid form of responsive design, with just few hard breakpoints, which doesn't seem to be what you need. 

[zilli]

Quoting Garrett Goodman "Adaptive design is server-side, meaning before the page is even delivered, the server (where the site is hosted) detects the attributes of the device, and loads a version of the site that is optimized for its dimensions and native features."

For AWD, usually a separate template is serve for each device. So, on the server-side I believe the task for PW is identify the device and load it's respective version. Any idea in how to do it?

More info http://thenextweb.com/dd/2015/09/01/is-adaptive-better-than-responsive-design/

[felix]

I think he is talking about delivering different ressources (and propably markup) depending on the device that is accessing the application.

Have a look at:  http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/10/responsive-website-design-with-ress/ 

[teppo]

Not only does that article use weird terminology (popular interpretation of adaptive web design is something entirely different), but it's also missing important parts of responsive web design – including the whole point of doing web design in a device-agnostic way. In most cases I'd rather suggest looking into ways of improving your responsive design workflow with mobile-first approach, lazy-loading assets, etc.

Either way, if you really need to go with server-side device detection, you might want to look into Mobile Detect module. It's far from a complete solution in this regard, but one step closer to what you're looking for

[LostKobrakai]

(popular interpretation of adaptive web design is something entirely different)

Are you sure you got the right link here?

@topic

Browser detection on the server side is quite flawed, so try to not use it. But there are things you can do on the server, like detecting webp support and other things based on the request headers, which does help in terms of squeezing the last bits of performance out of your website, but it's a long way before these really matter.

[teppo]

Are you sure you got the right link here?

You might be right. Looks like the uxpin one first describes adaptive design as something that does not change after initially being loaded (by which I assume they mean loaded using breakpoints which they specifically mention, though they're not being very clear about that), and then continues on describing adaptive design process (when designing from the scratch) as developing different breakpoints for the same layout.

 

Confusing much?

Terminology isn't the strong suit of the web design community, but I do have to admit that for me this interpretation of AWD was completely new, so.. learned something new here. I don't agree with the approach, though, and believe it's fundamentally broken; we don't know what the future holds and in order to be "future friendly" we need to take that into consideration in our designs.

[LostKobrakai]

Confusing much?

I was confused, because it did somehow link to the MobileDetect module as well. I've no clue why.

[zilli]

Confusing much?

Yeah.

It seems that RWD vs AWD is like Audi vs BMW, a is all a matter of taste. 

Anyway, from PW perspective how can I call the right template(once I had identified the device)?

[LostKobrakai]

Each template has an alternative template option. Pack your device sniffing in the _init.php and change "$page->template->altFilename" to whatever it's detecting.

[benbyf]

Yeah.

It seems that RWD vs AWD is like Audi vs BMW, a is all a matter of taste. 

Anyway, from PW perspective how can I call the right template(once I had identified the device)?

Disagree here, they're not the same (a car) but different, they're a motorbike and a car.

one is a total nightmare and the other is what everyone has decided to do after failing at AWD. RWD is the only way forward without spending all your life testing on each new device.

Sorry quite a strong opinion on this one through experience