Making the

Envato Marketplaces

Responsive

@jordanlewiz

What are the Envato Marketplaces?

A Collection of Online Digital Marketplaces

Fun Facts

7 Years old
3.4 million members
4.6 million items
Item sold every 10 sec
10 Authors sold > $1million
Themeforest: 111th Alexa ranking
25+ active developers
10+ deploys a day
MASSIVE code-base
Lots of user generated content

Where to begin?

Take one page and make it responsive

... and

Mobile-first

“Designing an online experience for mobile before designing it for the desktop Web — or any other device”

uxmatters.com

The added complexity of converting a legacy grid-less website to be mobile-first is mind boggling as there is a long period of time that most pages are a hybrid.

Tasks

Select a Mobile-First grid framework
Build a switch to limit which pages are responsive
Serve separate CSS for responsive pages
Conditional media-queries
Complete re-build header with off-canvas nav
Complete re-build of footer
Build responsive modules
Put it all together

Choosing a Grid Framework

Pure grid framework
Grids applied with mixins (no grid classes required in HTML)
Highly configurable
Works with Rails + Compass
Written with Sass
IE7+ compatibility (legacy fallback is desktop version)
Can change grid columns at different breakpoints
Actively developed and maintained

Responsive Switch

Control which pages should be responsive at the flip of a switch

def show
  @responsive = true
end

Enable the switch based on conditions

Specific pages
Features
User roles
Traffic percentage
A-B testing
etc

Conditional CSS

Serve up different CSS files depending if the page
has the responsive switch enabled or not

<head>

<%= if @responsive %>
    <link href="application-responsive.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<% else %>
    <link href="application.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<% end %>

application-responsive.sass

$responsive: true
@import 'application.sass'

Conditional media-queries

Compile both the desktop stylesheets (no media-queries)
and the responsive stylesheets (with media-queries)
from the same Sass files

How you ask?

Susy

“Susy provides the power-tools,
what you build is up to you.”

http://susy.oddbird.net

`at-breakpoint` mixin

Sass mixin to handle all our media-queries

$ie-fallback

Allows us to remove any media-query applied with the`at-breakpoint` mixin if the <html> has a certain class

Step 1: Add class to <html>

<!--[if lte IE 8]>
  <html class="lt-ie9 fixed-layout">
<![endif]-->

<!--[if gt IE 8]><!-->
  <html class="<%= 'fixed-layout' unless @responsive %>">
<!--<![endif]-->

Step 2: Setup Sass Config

// Susy
// ------------------------
// Grid settings
$container-style: fluid
$total-columns: 4
$column-width: 65px
$gutter-width: 20px
$grid-padding: 10px

// Breakpoints
$phone-only: 4 568px
$tablet-and-above: 569px 8
$tablet-only: 569px 8 1024px
$tablet-and-below: 8 1024px
$desktop-and-above: 1025px 12 fixed-layout

// Breakpoint output
$breakpoint-media-output: $responsive and not $lt-ie9
$breakpoint-ie-output: $lt-ie9 or not $responsive

Step 3: Use at-breakpoint mixin

.module
  // Mobile default
  background-color: red

  // Tablet
  +at-breakpoint($tablet-only)
    background-color: green

  // Desktop
  +at-breakpoint($desktop-and-above)
    background-color: blue

Output

Susy will remove any media-query applied with the `at-breakpoint` mixin

application-responsive.css

.module { background-color: red; }

@media (min-width: 569px) and (max-width: 1024px) {
  .module { background-color: green; }
}

@media (min-width: 1025px) {
  .module { background-color: blue; }
}

application.css

.module { background-color: red; }
.fixed-layout .module { background-color: green; }
.fixed-layout .module { background-color: blue; }
// With breakpoints removed the desktop style (background-color: blue) will take precedence

Rebuild header

with off-canvas nav

Most complex module
Took the most time
Required Prototyping
Device/Browser Edge-cases
Duplicate nav HTML
Lots of testing

Rebuild the footer

Responsive Modules

Coded to work anywhere and don’t care about or inherit
styles from their parent container.

At most, the parent container controls the position and
dimensions of where the module will be used.

Pagination module

Putting it all together

Other Considerations

Icon fonts
Hi-res logos for retina
SVGs
Living style-guide
Killing background sprites usage
Conditional Modals

Conclusion

It's a long journey
Our code is benefiting straight away
Freeing ourselves from legacy front-end constraints
We still have user generated content hurdles to overcome