Bore da, pawb.

I have to admit that I am going to have to look at this Responsive Layout stuff much against my better judgement as, frankly, I can't stand the big screen waste of space, the chino & skinny latte trendy hipster look that's infecting what would have been excellent websites.

But like the dinosaurs of old I realise that I am going to have to change because I have to change for no other reason that I have to. It's like trying to convince me to listen to Radiohead rather than Rush, Coldplay over Clapton and Lady Ga-Ga than Led Zeppelin. Change for change's sake. If I wanted to look at acres of wasted and useless space I'd go to St James Park on matchday and watch Newcastle United play.

So, kicking and screaming I am going to go onto the Responsive Layout bandwagon even though I can't stand the wretched things as I see sites which were once useful and full of information now having been designed sufficient;y that there's nothing left.

So, few questions, if you don't mind, about my 'improving' my sites for what I hope to be the last time before I hang up my coding sheets for good.

I use Coffee Cup software a lot. I am an enthusiastic user of the HTML Editor and it's, quite simply, the bee's knees. The FTP client is excellent and I can't ask for a lot more from it. In short I love these products and if I am to go down this road then I am going to use your Layout Maker over anyone else's.

So the questions.

First, my sites are in .asp . I can't imagine this to be an issue but best forewarned and all that, so, is this going to be an issue?

Secondly, I have my menus in separate html files so that they are included at run time by the asp server which means that I only have to make one set of menus. The same applies to the footer. Is this going to be an issue or do I have to have the menus in each and every one of the pages?

Thirdly. I use left handed column menus for the sub-menus. I prefer that because then the users can see all the sub-topics from their main menu choice in one place without having to click on anything. Is this going to be an issue?

That's it for now. I am off to grow a stupid beard and listen to Jay-Z's mp3s on my Beats rather than Jon Lord's flac files on my Bayers because I understand that this is Better.

Yours, the grumpy old git from the Welsh mountains.
Hwyl
Malc

Another question, if I may.

On my main site I have tables of data using the <table> element. The reason for this is that these actually contain columns of data and isn't just a pre-CSS way of formatting a page.

As a rule this data is wide enough for a proper monitor screen but isn't going to work on tablets and mobiles in normal portrait mode. This data is the whole purpose of my site and is what my customers pay for.

Now, if I am going to go mobile-centric can responsive site layout work on tablets/mobiles in landscape mode? And secondly, do tables work with Responsive Layout?

Yours slightly less grumpy now that I have had my fifth proper double espresso of the morning...

Hwyl
Malc

Hello Malcolm -

Greetings from a fellow 'cyber-citizen' who wasn't look forward to adopting yet another substantive paradigm shift. One gets tired of learning brand new ways to do something that one was still learning 'how to' the old way.

I started out with RLM two months ago - knowing virtually nothing about responsive except I knew what the results were, didn't like it much, particularly the way it tends to make a website look like a partially disassembled mosaic on 24" 1080i monitors (1920x1080).

However - like so many times before - the common and coarse public (the market) disagrees with my preferences/tastes and they have always opted to stumble their way ever closer to the ultimate troglodyte experience where all they have to do is poke and grunt.

RLM is mostly a visual CSS editor that allows you to set paths for images, chop up the page into various table-shaped formats with columns and rows using html elements like divs to do the deed, where the columns will 'float' according to how they fit in the current user viewport.

The key here is to get an understanding of the bootstrap framework which combines html5, css3, and javascript / jquery tools to provide a responsive mobile first websites. I would recommend reviewing http://www.w3schools.com/bootstrap/ and thinking of RLM Pro as being a visual editor for that concept.

Hope this helps you wrap your head around this responsive stuff... took me nearly a month to get that far.

Regards,
Gordon Lincoln

Thanks for the pointers.

Over a glass or two of a particularly fruity South African red I've decided that I will give it a go. If I put the side menu to the right then this Responsive thing may work. And if even one of my competitors fails to 'improve' their site then my mess of a site may climb from the bottom of page forty-nine on Google to mid way up the same page.

Until today I considered a Responsive site one that returned a Ping packet...

Thanks again
Malc

Malcom, RLM creates your framework, the 'bones' of your site. Hang whatever 'flesh' you want on those bones – menu includes and responsive tables, for example.

As you start to experiment with responsive design, you'll see you don't have to make your site look just like every Wordpress/Bootstrap site out there. Have a look through these examples for some inspiration:
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1514

Both of these sites (from the above article) have a good amount of content in multi-column layouts:
http://mediaqueri.es/owl/
http://mediaqueri.es/fds/

Thanks ever so much, Paintbrush.

Those two examples at the end of your post are what should be presented as what can be done with RLM rather than the normal sites as they are simply superb and, more to the point, inspirational.

You have no idea how much your post has cheered me up and has given me inspiration. So I have ordered the Pro version of the tool from Coffee Cup and I will give it a go. My site isn't as nearly as good as your work which is to be expected as web building isn't my game but I will give it a go today.

If I can get the front page changed then that would be a start and then I will just have to work through the rest of the site, page by page...

Thanks once again and I am off to try to find the RLM Pro manual and print it out.

Cheers
Malc

One step at a time
I hope you have some fun with your new web buiding tool.

Don't hesitate to ask for help, there's lots of it to be had in the forums – whatever you need.