Design & Development
User Agent parsing: how it works and how it can be used
July 20, 2017, by Martin Clancy
The User-Agent is a central piece of web architecture and plays an important role in content negotiation. It was created with the express intention of building the ability to address users making requests with different clients or ‘agents’ differently, depending on capabilities or context. This article will answer many of questions you may have around... Read More
How to choose media query breakpoints to best support all connected devices
June 14, 2017, by Stephen Delaney
Håkon Wium Lie first sketched out media queries in his initial CSS proposal in 1994. Unfortunately, we had to wait another 8 years till it became a recommended W3C standard in June 2012. When browsers started to widely support media queries, we thought that all our problems were solved. We had the solution to the evolving... Read More
Mobile web performance on news websites too slow for many
May 24, 2017, by Martin Clancy
We’ve written extensively on mobiForge on how web performance on mobile devices really makes a huge difference to your visitors and your business. We’ve also highlighted that the fast metropolitan WiFi speeds enjoyed in the offices of many content creators simply aren’t reflected in the real world where the vagaries of the network and the... Read More
JavaScript server-side rendering with device detection
April 13, 2017, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue
React and other JavaScript frameworks have frequently come under fire for not being suited to mobile. Hence mobile-first was a cornerstone of the Angular 2 rewrite. And despite React’s popularity, it still attracts the wrong kind of attention regarding mobile. To my friends on the React team: you are on the hook until there's a... Read More
Reducing page weight
March 28, 2017, by Ruadhán O'Donoghue
When approaching the issue of web page weight, it’s useful to keep in mind the well known engineering maxim, “Simplify, and then add lightness“. This article describes some of the ways you can add lightness and reduce your web page weight... Read More
