Content delivery FEATURE
in a more scalable way,’ he adds. For example, the company is in the process of redesigning the American Medical Association’s web delivery platform so that its journals, as part of the JAMA Network, are responsive.
It also recently clinched a deal with Oxford University Press to migrate its journals and many online products to a new SCM6 platform. And, pleasingly for Silverchair, all of the websites on its platform have been classed as ‘mobile- friendly’ by Google’s mobile optimisation test. In April this year, the US Internet technology multinational released a significant update to its algorithm, dubbed ‘mobilegeddon’, in which sites deemed mobile-friendly received higher Google rankings compared to less ‘compliant’ sites. The change was intended to reflect the rise of wireless device use across the internet and, for companies involved in web design, provided a strong indicator that mobile-friendly web design was growing in importance. But while Google’s nod to mobile access spelt
good news for Silverchair, like many in scholarly publishing, the business is aware that responsive design doesn’t yet tick all of the delivery boxes. For example, the company has used a third- party video distribution network to deliver video files in a playable format on mobile devices, and also uses its application programme interface to transmit data on SCM6 to third-party app developers, for clients.
As Hubbell also points out, imagery – such as the complex tables associated with scholarly articles – simply do not port well to mobile devices. ‘Responsive design has come a long way in the last few years and we’re starting to see solutions, such as the picture element and srcset for delivering responsive imagery,’ he says. ‘There are also a variety of plug-ins out there that you can use to mitigate many of the problems we originally saw with the roll-out of responsive sites,’ he adds. ‘But there is no performance silver bullet; it really comes down to careful planning and execution.’
A bit of both?
US-based Atypon, a provider of content hosting and management platforms for scholarly publishers, believes its has developed an approach that combines the best of both design worlds. In 2011, it launched Literatum for Mobile, based on an adaptive design approach primarily to speed page-loading times. As Jonathan Hevenstone, senior vice president of business development, asserts: ‘Pages load faster than with responsive web design, as you are sending predefined layouts to different devices... and statistics definitely indicate that users drop off a page that doesn’t load fast enough.’
But, as he adds: ‘The content you are delivering to each device is constrained by a template and we found that many of our publishers’ websites were looking very similar on mobile. This was exactly the opposite of what we have achieved on the desktop in terms of publisher branding and user experience.’
So, instead, the company turned to a
methodology called RESS – Responsive with Server Side – pioneered by Luke Wroblewski. Here, a single set of page templates define an entire website for all devices, but key components within that site have device-class specific implementations, rendered server-side. So, if the server detects, say, a mobile device, it will deliver the page template that has mobile components.
The end result is an adaptive layout at a single URL. And, as Hevenstone highlights: ‘You can optimise the design and source order for a specific class of device before it reaches the browser.’ ‘You’re basically doing responsive design, but you’re also optimising certain assets from the server, so clients only receive what they need,’ he adds. ‘The website acts like a responsive site but everything loads faster.’ Using its RESS methodology, Atypon
recently launched a new website – Heliyon – on its Literatum platform. Heliyon is Elsevier’s multi-discipline, online-only, open access journal.
‘If you take a look at this website, it has a modern, cutting-edge design, is very graphical and is fully responsive,’ says Hevenstone. ‘And, while we only have internal tests so far, we expect [the website] is going to load faster, than non-RESS responsive sites.’ Like Atypon’s recent websites, Heliyon also uses Literatum’s established web content management system, Page Builder, so its publisher can log on to the site in the browser and change the presentation of content using drag and drop widgets.
Many believe proliferating form-factors demand a different approach
‘This is the tool we use to build sites; this is the way that we and our customers can change sites, and now they can also change the default presentation for visitors viewing it on a mobile device,’ adds Hevenstone.
Owen Priestley, Semantico
www.researchinformation.info @researchinfo Brian Hubbell, Silverchair
Indeed, Hevenstone believes using RESS- designed websites with this set-up allows publishers to have even more control than they would with a typical responsive design website. And with Heliyon also passing Google’s mobile- optimisation test, Atypon expects to launch more websites, based on this methodology soon. ‘I believe by using RESS, we have really created an intuitive experience that goes beyond anything other designers in our space have been working on,’ says Hevenstone. ‘It takes into account fluid design, responsiveness of the site for mobile devices and fast page loads based on RESS,’ he adds. ‘I think we now have the best user-centric experience.’ But while the industry’s platform and tool providers pursue nuances of these design methodologies, mobile use will, without a doubt, continue to rise and the range of wireless devices will proliferate. And while the jury is out on exactly which methodology will become most widely used, the leaning towards responsive design is already clear. As Silverchair’s Brian Hubbell puts it: ‘It’s great to see how far responsive design has come and I can only imagine what is left to come.’ ‘This is all about the content delivery for everyone,’ he adds. ‘And we’re not going to pare down, or truncate, your experience just because you prefer to read on your mobile phone.’
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