In a short 140 pages Ethan Marcotte shows the future of designing for an internet which is device agnostic and platform independent. Gone are the days where you create a whole new markup for every new browser and screen type. Instead Ethan shows how we can leverage semantic code, screen types, and queries to overwrite rules for different CSS classes based on screen size.

My favorite passage relates to the assumption most designers and developers currently make about the device giving context to the needs of user. Research has shown that more and more people are using “the mobile web” while in their home space instead of just while on the road and while the needs and capabilities of these users and devices may be different there is no golden rule. You and your users will know the priorities unique to your business or service better than anyone else. Keeping these priorities in mind while you create the site is very important to making the site responsive to the device being used to view it.
Also important to the book are the first four chapters which deal with how to create a truly flexible template based on percentages and ems instead of fixed px and min/max width tags (there is still a place for those tags, but use them only when you truly need them).

The book contains many classroom examples and real life websites currently using this methodology and is presented with a light geek humor making it easy to read and understand these revolutionary concepts. Every web developer and designer should read this book to understand the challenges and opportunities that losing control of the screen size presents.

I cant wait to read the rest of the series and redo my website (again).
Score: 5/5
Summary: Its concise and well written; important and creative. if you work online you need to read about this concept. It is the next evolution of the internet and its time to start future-proofing your websites.