Responsive websites: Boston papers show what’s next for media sites

The Berkeley Beacon, Emerson College’s independent student newspaper, is ahead of most professional media; its new HTML5 website is responsive, Nieman Journalism Lab reported today.


The site is now completely mobile device friendly, the paper’s editors announced.


A responsive Web design addresses the problem of constantly changing devices on which to view websites. “Instead of responding to today’s needs for a desktop Web version adapted to the most common screen resolution, along with a particular mobile version (often specific to a single mobile device), the idea is to approach the issue the other way around: use flexible and fluid layouts that adapt to almost any screen,” MSDN Magazine explained.


The Boston Globe unveiled its new premium content mobile initiative in December last year, Read Write Web noted, calling it “a win in the fight against mobile device fragmentation and screen sizes and the future of how content is displayed on mobile devices.”


Emerson College is located in Boston as well, and “it’s no coincidence the Beacon site looks a lot like BostonGlobe.com,” according to Nieman.


Alexander C. Kaufman, the paper’s editor-in-chief, and coder/designer Ryan Catalani studied the Globe’s new design carefully.


The new website doesn’t contain advertising yet, but it will when traffic levels reach a more steady pace, Kaufman told Nieman. And when it does, the goal is for the Beacon to look “closer to BostonGlobe.com than Boston.com.” This means looking more like a print newspaper, with fewer ads.


To create its new site last year, the Boston Globe hired design and development firm the Filament Group, according to Read Write Web, which sat down with the group’s partners for a helpful Q&A on how the new design was constructed for all devices.


Images: Screenshot and ReadWriteWeb