Before getting started
As stated previously, we will write a brand new application in this chapter. However, there are some general considerations we made in an early stage of our learning. We will use these considerations and also the very simple code built with them. In this chapter, we will use the final code, produced in Chapter 2, Applying Custom Styles, called ch02_webgis, as a basis.
Basic considerations
One of the most challenging problems in responsive web design is detecting the type of the client's device. There are several effective approaches such as adjusting the style of the web page to the screen's dimensions with CSS media queries, or detecting the type of the hardware from the navigator.userAgent property in JavaScript (device detection). These methods are quite practical for a blog, news page, or shopping page, but not effective in our case.
The goal of our application is to adapt to the different capabilities of handheld and desktop computers. If we are working on a desktop...
