You need to separate the HOW from the WHY. I agree that splitting a column into two is a potentially useful idea. But just because it's not a common pattern doesn't negate responsive design: it just means it hasn't been figured out yet.

Responsive design is an insight that is slightly ahead of it's ability to execute. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater just because it's not clear. The insights that come from this approach, even if you just make minor tweaks are far reaching.

I hear you and I think moving this to Branch was a good idea. Twitter's no good for real dialogue.

I'm starting to use responsive design on a blog that I just moved to Wordpress and I dig the concept overall. I'm very much an open web kind of guy so I'm definitely rooting for responsive design.

It's just when I see that super wide column of text which becomes almost unreadable to me, I think, that was created by someone more interested in mobile than the web (who is probably misinterpreting "mobile first")

I could be totally wrong about that but it always strikes me that way. So, I'm not negating responsive design though I can see how it seemed that way.

I hear you, you're not against it, just learning/asking questions. A couple of points: 1) Your super wide text is just bad design plain and simple. That's not RWD's fault... ;-) 2) @andrewsmatt just replied on Twitter that the two col problem actually *has* been solved: labs.ft.com This makes my point, we just need to keep banging the rocks together and figure this stuff out...

It's not just bad design, it's bad responsive web design. I hope you're not pulling one of those maneuvers anything you don't like gets removed from the definition!

Maybe Matt will join us here. I just dropped two tweets over there and it's already looking crowded and confused.

Clyde,

I'll copy your tweets in here and answer them individually as you're right it's a little confusing at the moment.

That's cool but I can't use it. I'm not a programmer and I don't have the money for one.
twitter.com

I can't help you there other than to politely recommend learning Javascript. Codecademy.com makes it really easy.

Question: "When it takes a day to build a web page with a single column article" It takes that long?
twitter.com

What it means is that (before Columnflow) it was easy to make a single column layout and an impractically large amount of time to make a multi-column one. The specific time measurements are really not important. Swap "a day" with "10 minutes" and the meaning is the same.

Matt

I think there are some broad generalizations being made here about design in general. For example, the issue of 1 column vs. multiple. There is no standard for either, whether on large or small screens. Good, readable typographic design considers a number of factors: type size, line length, line spacing, as well as font (style). Columns can certainly be yet an additional factor in this mix, but it's no trump card in the game of web design.

And any of those factors can gracefully respond to different screen sizes. For a single column of text, I'd recommend (as I do in my 2nd book, Mobilizing Web Sites) making the type size larger so that it's easier to read, even though the line-length will be a bit on the short side.

Matt, thanks, I was on Twitter so it didn't communicate well.

Here's the deal: I learned html and stopped after that. I had to choose between writing and moving to the next level with programming and it was an easy choice.

I'm a creator taking advantage of all these web tools. It's great to see innovation at FT but I'm working with Wordpress.com at the moment and I guess none of the designers making their themes are up on that or working with it yet. For me, it's kind of like hearing about something a medical researcher does in the lab that won't be relevant in my world for years to come.

Maybe in the next year or two I will be hiring people in which case the scenario changes for me. But, for now, I'm facing the limits of Wordpress.com.

On the time, single vs multicolumn, etc. - I thought you might be referring to the hobbling of newspapers by legacy CMS that still aren't overly impressive. Honestly that's one of the reasons newspapers have struggled but it speaks more to their mindset than the limits of tech.

In any case, thanks for clarifying.

Kristopher, if you want to get into specific examples, all of which I'm thinking about, I could give some. I'm not making generalizations so much as discussing my experience as a web reader and a blogger.

ReadWrite is a good example. I'm looking at the following post on a Mac OSX with Firefox 18:
readwrite.com

It's true that when I make the type larger on my screen (and the column keeps the same fixed width since I didn't alter my browser window), once the type gets a bit bigger than I typically see on the web it does reduce the number of words in a line to my preference.

Kristopher, in terms of standards, nobody's in charge but you definitely see trends and I'm sure there's plenty of useful research on the topic. In my case, I'm interested in the difference in how my brain processes lines of different lengths and I find the ultrawide columns with lots of words per line to get in the way of thinking quickly.

I would think the basis of good design for a news site would be focused on things like communication, comprehension, etc.

I rarely saw this problem before responsive design and I'm only seeing it on blogs using responsive design.

So, sorry if that's still too broad but I'm talking about a specific historical shift that I've observed and ReadWrite is just one example.

Re: Legacy Systems - Nope we have a cutting edge API where our content comes from.

Re: Word Press templates - I think responsive Word Press templates are starting to emerge. This one looks quite nice wide & thin:-
wordpress.org

I think Kristopher hit the nail on the head by describing the problem of responsive design as one which requires the consideration of a large number of factors - and whether to have columns and if so how many is just one of those.

We've been experimenting with varying the number of columns, column spacing and line spacing as the size of the screen changes in order to try and keep the word count per line/typographic measure constant - which might solve the problem of short lines Kristopher described.

Sounds like you guys are doing interesting stuff.

I'll keep that theme in mind at whatever point I do a Wordpress.org site. It's not available for .com.

However, my problem is within an individual blog post and that doesn't solve it.

I want to be able to post a full width video and then have the text break out into columns beneath the video when it's gets to a certain size. But that might be too much to hope for at this point in time.

Again, that's just one specific example. I'm not reducing responsive design to these particular concerns of mine and I'm still finding out what's readily available.

Note: Read/Write is tablet first not mobile first. Same problem, IMO.

readwrite.com

Actually for particular use case you don't need Javascript / FT Columnflow - it is possible to do with pure CSS (and probably could even be done within a Word Press article, though I haven't tested this):-
codepen.io

For what it's worth I quite like the Read/Write design, though the scrolling can be quite jerky.

Cool. I'll have to take a closer look. Thanks!

You're welcome.

(And my previous message should have said "for *this* particular use case"... Getting late in London... )

I got your meaning!

PS - speaking of research about line length and reading comprehension:
google.com

Interesting stuff.

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I just discovered there's no report spam function in branch.com :(

That's lame!