Re: Responsive design question

[Doug_H]

Thank you for your response, Paulie, I appreciate your insight.

I do understand that the responsive aspect of design is relative to the viewport, and that targeting the design breakpoints relative to those different viewports is the primary purpose. So, that regardless of the viewport, the design layout is accessible, or displays as I desire.

Re:
What I am saying is you don’t target OS/browsers with media queries, you target viewport sizes.

Right, I understand that, but assuming that I am only targeting small viwports, i.e. mobile device viewports, to make layout changes, then media queries within the stylesheet should be recognized by all current devices, which would make the media queries not being recognized by older browsers a moot point for those devices/viewports, right? In other words, why would I need to ensure media query compatibility with older browsers if the smaller mobile viewports is the only segment that I am targeting for the responsive changes.

I guess that is the crux of my question. If I am initially only targeting mobile (small) viewports to change the design layout, and the desktop layout is served as essentially static, I wouldn’t need to worry about including respond, or css3 media queries js scripts to ensure older browser compatibility. This would only be relevent for desktop viewport changes where older browsers would come into play, is that correct?

Re:
As for older versions of IE (actually any version of IE)…has that ever been used on mobile device?

It was my understanding that the Windows phone browser was originally based on IE7, and enhanced with all the same features as the webkit browsers on competing platforms. So that if a website rendered or behaved incorrectly on desktop IE7 it would very likely have the same errors on the phone. But I have read that this is no longer a factor, as all Windows phones are now using an updated version where the old issues are no longer a problem. However, my understanding may be incorrect!

Thanks again, Paulie, for any insight.

Doug