Responsive Web Design is peremptory for any company looking to redesign their website.  It sounds interesting, but what is responsive web design and how does it work?  Here is a quick rundown, in a non-techy way for this new standard practice in web development.

A responsive website is basically a site whose code is created so that it can automatically adapt to the screen sizes of various devices by setting rules to create fluid/flexible layouts.  This means that companies no longer have to develop separate websites for desktop users and for mobile/tablet users.  They just need one!

It does this through the use of CSS3 media queries.  CSS is the rules that create the design and layout of a website.  This optimized website code will let your website essentially look good on several desktop screen sizes, tablets, and smartphones.  This is a ‘game changer’ because it provides site owners the ability to give a similar experience for website visitors, regardless of how they are accessing the site.   All you have to do is modify the CSS to detect the size of a users’ device, and then it will automatically push out the website in a flexible way so that all media, images, content, and links are accessible.

Recently, I needed to be able to clear a single site’s cookies on my computer in order to test an issue that a client was reporting.  I certainly did NOT want to clear all cookies on my computer, which is the default and easiest method for most browsers (how would I remember those thousands of passwords that I have stored everywhere??), and it took a little searching on how to do this in each browser for just one site.  Hopefully you’ll find this list useful as well!

• Google Chrome: http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95647
  1. Click Chrome menu on browser toolbar
  2. Select Settings
  3. Click Show advance settings
  4. Click Content settings in Privacy section
  5. In Cookies section, select the site that issued the cookie, then the cookie, and click Remove
• Firefox:  http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/delete-cookies-remove-info-websites-stored#w_delete-cookies-for-a-single-site
  1. Click Firefox button or Tools menu, then click Options
  2. Select Privacy panel
  3. Set Firefox will: to “Use custom settings for history”
  4. Click Show Cookies
  5. In the search field, type the name of the site whose cookies you want to remove.
  6. Select the cookie in the list to remove and click “Remove Cookie”
  7. Click “Close”
• Internet Explorer 9:  http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie8-windows_other/i-want-to-selectively-delete-cookies-in-windows-7/ac10aa92-6919-40b2-a8c7-06a4fe184b6c (NOTE: Though hosted on a Microsoft website, this response was from a non-Microsoft employee, but I couldn’t locate an applicable Support document)
  1. Click on Tools, Internet Options
  2. Under Browsing History, click Settings
  3. Click View Files
  4. Locate the cookies to delete, right click and then click Delete

For all this info in one nifty page with nice screenshots:  http://www.howtogeek.com/111925/delete-cookies-in-the-five-most-popular-web-browsers-in-windows

My fourth week is coming to a close. This week was a very productive week. Richard and I have made some great steps toward the Beacon NetCafe. Also, Mark has talked to one partner and they are all for it. The project is coming along nicely. The Monday meeting with the technical support group went well. We decided that WordPress would meet our needs and Cascade Server would demand too much time at the present time. In future, the company will change it to Cascade since the company is a partner of Hannon Hill. I have already been researching about WordPress and Cascade. We will have a design meeting on Monday to discuss various designs and such. I can also help with the content using WordPress. Richard has agreed to teach me some things about WordPress. I am looking forward to learning new things about WordPress. I have also been continuing my research on competitors for the company. I have found enough data to see how much expected revenue should come from just one employee in this industry. Next week I need to determine what other things I need to look at for the competitive analysis. I have already found a lot of information about the companies, and I have narrowed it down to four companies. I am looking forward to working with WordPress and continuing my research on other companies.

I have already learned a good amount of information about WordPress and Cascade Server. I truly knew very little about these content management systems. I am starting to pick up some of the lingo used around the company. WordPress is an open source system. Before I had heard of open source but never really know much about it. It is very interesting. The strength of open source is that it is completely open to the world. Anyone with a computer and the internet can contribute by creating templates, helping answer questions, and/or solving problems. Most developers are more than happy to respond to emails or questions on forums. It sounds like there is community for WordPress. Casecade Server is cms from Hannon Hill. This would require building a website from the ground up. There are defiantly some advantages to using this cms. You can build the website to your exact needs but it requires much more time. WordPress has starting templates that can be played around with to better the website.

Jennifer told me about responsive WordPress templates. These are pretty cool. Basically, the website is responsive to what device you are using to view the website. For example, if I use my cell phone to view the website then it will automatically change the format, size, text, etc. for my cell phone. This is different than making a completely different mobile website. I am learning so much about creating a website, and I hope I can use this information in my future career.

StatCounter shows that within the past few days Chrome has become the more popular browser on the web.

StatCounter's Browser Statistics - Click to visit interactive graph

In the past year, Chrome has become more popular than both Firefox and IE. Chrome now ranks just under half a percent higher than Internet Explorer.  Both IE and Chrome tend to compete against each other for weekend statistics.  But usage isn’t everything–I put recent versions of the five major modern browsers through benchmark testing:

Rank	Browser	Benchmark Screenshot	Resources Screenshot
1	Chrome Version 19.0.1084.46 m
2	Opera Version 11.64
3	Safari Version 5.1.4
4	Internet Explorer Version 9.0.8112.16421
5	Firefox Version 12.0

Benchmark Info:

• Performed using Rightware’s Browsermark – Run your own browser benchmark
• 3/4 through the process, the leap in CPU usage is caused by 3D rendering (I assume through the Canvas API in JS)
• Safari and Opera both failed their first time running the benchmark–The task manager screenshots above are wider because I had to widen the window to keep the graph on-screen during the failed attempts.
• Benchmarks we’re tested with only the active browser and task manager running.
• Tested on 3.06 Ghz Core 2 Duo and 2GB DDR3 RAM with Windows 7 Pro