This first article is the source of it all! Ethan Marcotte coined the phrase and since then it has been the keyword when talking about the evolution and future of the internet. Ethan eventually wrote a book on the topic which is listed in the article itself and can be purchased on alistapart.com.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/

After that you can do a quick Google search and find countless blogs (including this one) that will talk about it. Some are for the new methodology, others (the critics) tend to lean away and say that it is a novel idea but still not good enough. I myself have been experimenting with it recently and found that it does have its benefits but also it does have still a few kinks to work out.

So lets get down to it. Has you may have read responsive design is the idea that a users viewing device should not be looked at as a negative factor when building a site. In the past most users would use a desktop monitor to view web sites, however with the advent of the smartphone that render full web pages on a small screen new conventions were needed to display the same information without losing quality. So how do you convey the same amount of data to the user on multiple screen sizes with out jeopardizing usability and navigation? This is the question Ethan Marcotte wants to answer with responsive design. Using new and existing web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and media-queries, Ethan hopes to ease the burden of making web sites that fit multiple screen resolutions. I for one love this concept, because it will now allow developers to only code markup once instead of having multiple code for multiple formats. Think about it, we try to reuse code when ever we can by making templates to hold one block of code to use throughout our sites. This allows for us to make changes in one location and it will proliferate throughout the rest of the site. The same concept applies here. We can code one page of markup and it will proliferate through the various screen sizes.

But why should you care about screen sizes? Well like I said earlier smart phones have become all the rage in our society. Everyone has one or, according to research, plans to buy one in the near future. So with all these mobile devices out there that can connect anyone to the internet at any time of day or any place on earth, the internet will need to accommodate this. Mobile traffic is now accounting for around 25% of all traffic to visit websites and that number is rising. Web Developers need new creative, faster, and mobile friendly ways to development content not just around desktop but also around smart phones and tablet computers. I for one like the responsive design concept but there are other competing methodologies out there that have their advantages and disadvantages. I highly suggest doing a little research on the topic and see what is right for your personal and corporate needs.

So far it looks like Mozilla was not playing around! Firefox does have a significant increase in performance when compared to the current leader, Google’s Chrome browser. However these increases are measured in fractions of milliseconds to the average web surfer there will be no noticeable difference. Alas Mozilla does deserve a moment in the sun, but I wouldn’t pop the champagne corks just yet as there seems to be a imminent release of Chrome from 16 to 17 which will bring its own slew of improvements!

It looks like the browser arms race is just getting good!

Full test results below>

Here is the link to the GitHub repo:
https://github.com/jpalladino84/LightsOut_game