hello!

i have started doing some web design recently and this is the 2nd time i'm redesigning a very simple, static website for someone else.
again i find myself searching for the right resources.
it seems that there is all sorts of CMS on one hand, and totally outdated "Free Website Templates" on the other.

a CMS is definitely too much for those simple web pages - setting it up would take more time than recoding it from scratch. even something like CMSimple.

searching for "website tutorial mobile friendly html css" yields results, but they all seem rather advanced, using javascript and prefabricated "magical" css templates...
on the other hand, those old website templates simply don't cut it anymore, esp. when you have different screen resolutions in mind.

i perceive some sort of hole in the middle between too-simple-and-outdated and too-advanced-and-feature-rich.
or, between "absolute beginner" and "uber cloud designer".

any ideas? thanks.

edit: i'd like to get by without javascript, html and css only, maybe some php.
is that wrong?
edit2: i just found out that the samsung galaxy s4 (not the newest model anymore!) has a screen res of 1,920 x 1,080 (441 ppi)! that is more than i have on my desktop monitor! so maybe i'm just worrying too much about mobile device compatibility?

Start with either Twitter Bootstrap or Zurb Foundation.

http://foundation.zurb.com/templates.html
http://getbootstrap.com/getting-started/#examples

And btw, when you design for phones you treat them as having half their actual pixel resolution.

thanks dugan.

i had a look at bootstrap previously and imho it falls into the "javascript and prefabricated "magical" css templates" category, but foundation.zurb looks interesting and really seems to fit into some sort of "intermediate" category.

it has an option to build your own download, going to play with that.
foundation uses javascript, too, but it's possible to minimize its use with the custom build. maybe eliminate completely.

in the end i used this one:
http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/css/re...site-tutorial/

it uses zurb foundation, but i think a little simplified.
i could remove all javascript, it still works nicely.
"work" for me means: resizes itself on smaller screens.

i tested it simply resizing my browser window, later on different phones and found out something interesting:
most phones tell the server that they have a much smaller resolution (device-width) than what they have. less than 50%, i think some generic 320x480 (=half a vga screen).
and that value does not change when you hold it in landscape - youhave to add "orientation landscape" to your css if you want to take that into consideration.