Woah, I get it Thanks for clearing it up man *I've been coding all day and now can barely read, but I'm about to log off and that post has given me a big wide smile, from ear to ear
If you want a complete steaming pile as a result... Isn't this like the fourth or fifth time I've seen this exact same response from you on these forums? Like... down to the letter? Eh, reporting as possible spam... since it adds SO much legitimacy to bootstrap people spamming "use it" the same way halfwit script-tards do jQuery.
He just did it again, wow. Don't even know if "John Michael" knows he'd already posted that identical response in THIS thread AND IT WAS REMOVED. Definite bot or spammer. Reported.
By far the least time-consuming way is to choose a responsive framework, read the tutorials, and start using them to design your sites. There are two major responsive frameworks out there: Bootstrap and Foundation. I've used both; people will argue over which is better, but the reality is that they accomplish essentially the same thing and it doesn't really matter which one you choose. It may seem intimidating to learn, but if you already know a bit of HTML and CSS and spend a week or so playing around with it, you'll have it down. From my own testing, using responsive landing pages gets FAR higher conversion rates from mobile users, so investing some time into learning responsive web design should be worth it!
Assuming you want a steaming pile of garbage as the result... and since you have to learn to use the frameworks, why not just learn to do it WITHOUT the framework first since it's NOT rocket science, and is FAR easier with a far better result. Better... <noah>RIGHT</noah>. People keep using that word with these idiotic asshat bullshit frameworks that piss all over the markup and smear the CSS all over the carpets...
Using responsive frameworks will NOT produce a steaming pile of garbage; plenty of reputable sites including Mozilla, Twitter, The Washington Post, PBS, National Geographic, etc. use Bootstrap or Foundation. I agree that learning how to do it without the framework isn't rocket science, but why reinvent the wheel? I could spend two days designing a site using Foundation or a week designing it without to achieve the EXACT same result with the EXACT same conversion rates. This ain't Dreamweaver - many of the best web developers in the world are involved in the creation and use of these frameworks. "Piss all over the markup?" Foundation can be used with 100% semantic markup -- check the latest version. Some people are purists, and I get that. But why build every site from the ground up when you can save the time and spend it on something more important?
I dont' see how it saves time -- however if you're blowing two days using a framework for what at tops should be two hours work, then you've probably got other issues going on... given that a well coded set of media queries atop a semi-fluid elastic design shouldn't even break 2k of your total CSS. ... and just because something is popular or used on the sites you listed (many of which are inaccessible crap that cost their owners visitors) doesn't make it good. Beiber and Whiney Houston are/were popular, didn't make them anything more than talentless hacks either. Let's look at the Washington Post -- great example of asshattery in action... setting aside the obvious accessibility failings of absurdly undersized fixed metric fonts, serif fonts on screen media, illegible color contrasts (dark orange on dark grey, light grey on dark grey) -- the kicker is the damned thing ISN'T EVEN RESPONSIVE... Meanwhile under the hood it reeks of being put together by someone who has their cranium firmly wedged up 1997's rectum. As if the MASSIVE static scripting in the markup wasn't bad enough, the gibberish use of numbered headings, idiotic use of classes for nothing in the typical "inheritance, what's that?" bull and absolute URL's for nothing (trademarks of turdpress developers), endless pointless div and span for nothing, strong on things that shouldn't be recieving "more emphasis" -- entirely what I've come to expect from the dipshits dumb enough to use turdpress. To the point that if I actually cared about ANYTHING on the Washington Post's website, as a USER I'd still be a bounce, especially with the MINUTE PLUS pageload; a simple source to content comparison says it all -- 301k of ineptitude to deliver 12k of plaintext and two dozen content images; easily TEN TIMES the markup needed for such a ridiculously simple page. NOT that it seems to actually use bootstrap or foundation -- and did I mention it's not even responsive either? Not what I'd hold up as a poster child for anything other than a brick and mortar who still hasn't figured out how to have a relevant web presence. PBS is likewise "responsive, what's that?!? WCAG, what's that?!?" and a train wreck of coding ineptitude; though in their case it's kind of expected given their budget and the knowledge (or lack therein) of the people running it. Nat Geo? What retard wrote that? Again the exact same inept re-re BULL... How the hell do the people making websites like these get their jobs, much less keep them? Oh wait, ignorance on the part of the suits writing paychecks who think they can get sound technical advice from the pages of Forbes, which is akin to trying to get sound financial advice from the pages of popular electronics. Hell, all you need to do is look at foundations WEBSITE in something other than Firefox to see how retarded it is.... since the menu is overlapping 90% of the page so you can't see any content... much less the HTML 5 "I can haz intarnets" markup thrown together by the same halfwits who seem to think hgroup was a good idea, abusing numbered headings and horizontal rules because they never grasped what they are even FOR. Hence the 24k of markup for 4k of plaintext, easily two or three times what should be needed... going hand in hand with the broken responsive layout ON THEIR OWN SITE filled with design elements that have no damned business on a website in the first place! POSTER CHILD for everything wrong with this framework BULL! I really don't get how using more markup, more CSS, and then throwing even MORE code at it using some idiotic bloated framework makes it 'easier'... Seriously, WHAT THE HELL IS IN THE KOOL AID?!? Quite literally, this tells me EVERYTHING I need to know about foundation: http://www.cutcodedown.com/images/foundationIsCrap.jpg Though this helps too... http://www.cutcodedown.com/images/foundationBreakdown.jpg ANY developer using more than 64k of CSS for an entire site on a single media target deserves to be slapped with a wet trout, then dragged round back o' the woodshed to be put down like old yeller. Ineptitude of the highest order... How are people DUMB ENOUGH to swallow this malarkey?!?
Oh, and it's always lovely when sites who have a significant audience of people with infirmities and disabilities are inaccessible bloated slow loading train wrecks... good thing this isn't the UK.