Appendix A. Context-aware design
This appendix covers
- Introducing context awareness in web design
- Level-four media queries
- Using JavaScript for context awareness
This book provides an introduction to the concept of responsive web design. Hopefully after reading it you’ll understand how to design and develop responsive websites. As has been mentioned, responsive web design means providing your users with a layout that adapts to their needs. Responsive web design illustrates a primitive form of context-aware computing.
What if, instead of resizing the design to adapt to the user’s device, you could also format parts of the site based on factors like location, time of day, the user’s history on the site, or the user’s activity level. Theoretically, all of this data is accessible to the design of a page and could be used to greatly enhance the user’s experience.
By implementing some forms of context awareness in websites, you could streamline the interface options. For example, you could use context awareness to make assumptions about why a visitor is visiting the page, such as for a user who often visits a site for specific reasons. Perhaps you run a site that provides weather information. In this case, knowing the user’s location would give you the opportunity to serve them the weather in their area.