Is responsive design coding across most devices achievable

[Whitey]

This is from the perspective of a business owner's expectancy of his template coders.

1. Should responsive design be achievable across the majority of all devices?

We have a situation where our old code doesn't match with iphone5's when Samsung Galaxies do. Then reverses if it works for iphone5.

I would have thought this would be ABC .... thoughts on coding issues ?

2. Is there a freeware that allows a business owner to quality check the designs across all mobile devices ?

3. What's the most clear way to brief or instruct the coders to cover all devices [ while being realistic ] and avoid misunderstanding ?

[not2easy]

You might want the crew to take a look at Normalize.css: [nicolasgallagher.com...] which helps with the discrepancies between browser default states and makes some css not do what it "should". There are a number of ways to use different grids such as bootstrap or Pure, and ways to bypass grids. The evolution of means to an end has been explosive and can be confusing. One size does not fit all.

The majority view I have seen is "device agnostic" in that the best way for coding responsive pages sets breakpoints or media queries based on your content and not for specific device resolution. If containers have fluid widths, then specific widths are less important.

A good tool to get a look using device emulation is available with Chrome: [developer.chrome.com...] - it can be used it various ways. You can set the device, screen size, resolution and more for testing that is close to real life views: [developer.chrome.com...]

[justa]

What not2easy said.

1) Yes. Not just the majority, but literally all of the devices.

2) No. You can use something like BrowserStack that will provide you the ability to test the site across a variety of devices, but that is a paid for thing. There are some tools that can specify the width of the "device" but it's not a true reflection because you're using a different browser on a different platform to what you're trying to test for. The best "FREE" option is probably Google Developer Tools.

3) I wrote an article, [responsivedesign.is...] which describes why you shouldn't be focussing on the devices but rather the content itself. If you get the developers to focus on the content and add breakpoints there then you never have to worry about the next device.

[bhukkel]

You can use the dev tools from microsoft here [dev.modern.ie...] It free and is powered by Browserstack. See it as a light version of Browserstack.