Thank you for the comprehensive writeup...even if it can be done, there is still a good amount of skill and knowledge required to pull it off...too often, non-designers underestimate the work and design considerations involved.
That said, I wonder if you are going too far in being responsive? The 1000px+ size, IMO, takes the concept of whitespace too far. For example, the third most important datapoint -- the arrival date, is located as far as possible from the two critical datapoints (price and departure date)...in the narrower versions of the site, the listings are, IMO, significantly easier to scan. I wonder if you (or rather, your users) wouldn't benefit from keeping the listings no wider than they are in iPad portrait?
The other choice, of course, is to just move Arrival Date to the left side, but that's a consideration not related to the responsive design.
> too often, non-designers underestimate the work and design considerations involved.
The story of my life! In my entire career as a web developer, the hardest non-technical task I've ever faced is convincing management that we need a designer. I guess they think all they do is come up with some colors or something, because there is never any value given to having someone on-hand that actually knows what they're doing. So frustrating.
Not just design work though, but also content and features work, which pulls in product development and sometimes, infrastructure people. Responsive/mobile design necessarily makes content disappear or moved around, which can substantially change the function of the site.
...resizing to the mobile width hides the "Lock Flight" buttons that are normally placed in the far right. So someone had to agree/argue that hiding those buttons was a worthwhile compromise (as opposed to stacking them on the bottom).
Fully agree. At least 'graphic design' is easier to explain than 'information design', which most here at work probably think is a farce or a figment of imagination.
Nice writeup explaining an overview of Foundation, Modernizer, etc..
I like what you did with your responsive tables. They look good.
Also, is this really a "complex" web app. Doesn't really seem like there's a ton of fields to fill out or data to present. I was hoping someone was finally doing a writup on a data-dense app with many/complex fields of data entry with some best practices (this is the article I'm waiting for, though you have a good start).
BTW, I'm a fan of Foundation, so I was excited to see how others are using it.
That said, I wonder if you are going too far in being responsive? The 1000px+ size, IMO, takes the concept of whitespace too far. For example, the third most important datapoint -- the arrival date, is located as far as possible from the two critical datapoints (price and departure date)...in the narrower versions of the site, the listings are, IMO, significantly easier to scan. I wonder if you (or rather, your users) wouldn't benefit from keeping the listings no wider than they are in iPad portrait?
The other choice, of course, is to just move Arrival Date to the left side, but that's a consideration not related to the responsive design.