Inside LabourStart

“Responsive design” is a new buzz-word in the world of web design and was coined by Ethan Marcotte in this landmark article.

It basically means – your website should render correctly on every device, from the smallest mobile phone to a large screen television.  I’ve spent the last few days working on our campaigns and am very pleased to have made a breakthrough in the last 24 hours.

I still have a bit more tweaking to do, but basically if you go to http://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign_responsive.cgi?c=1828 it should look pretty normal on your desktop or laptop, but visit that on your phone or tablet, and it should look very different — one column, red top, etc.

If you want to test this on your phone, no need to type in that whole URL – use this shortcut:

http://bit.ly/ZqBpak

The main reason to do this is because we know that a large number of our readers — possibly tens of thousands — are now using email on their mobile phones and tablets, and when we send a message saying we want them to support our campaign, and they click on the link, we want this new, single-column screen to come up so it’s easy for them to sign up to campaigns while sitting on a bus or in a cafe.

The next step is to fix this page so it renders well on the phone and then, of course, to change that URL by dropping the “_responsive” bit.

Edd has already begun work on the next stage — making sure our news pages also render correctly on phones and tablets.