Mobile first display

- [Instructor] One of the neatest new features of Brightspace Daylight is that it uses responsive web design, which means that the layout will automatically adjust according to the aspect ratio of the display advice. So, here, we have an instructor view of a D2L site and it's maxed out to take up the entire screen. In previous versions of D2L, if we were to adjust the size of this window, we'd eventually get a scroll bar down here along the bottom and some of our content would always be awkwardly out of frame. If, however, we adjust this window in the Brightspace Daylight version, all of our content is preserved and the functionality and the display automatically adapts.

Now, this is a very neat thing in terms of the platform's modularity. Since this responsive design happens automatically, it's much easier to use D2L on tablets and phones, especially once you get the hang of the interface changes. To demo this, I'll shrink the window down to about the size of a typical smartphone. As you can see, the main display modules resize automatically to both stay in the frame until, eventually, there's only room for one. At that point, the module in the upper left hand corner will get priority, and the other modules are pushed down lower in the screen.

As you can see, though, they all retain their functionality, which is very, very helpful. You may have noticed, though, that our navigation bar went away, or did it? Here, in the upper left hand corner of the screen, you'll see a new icon called a hamburger icon. If you click on it, all of the relocated navigation links pop up in a sidebar menu and the nested organization hasn't changed here, only the display. So, if we want to get to Discussions, we just select Communication and then Discussions.

Once we hit the root of the organization, we're taken to a mobile-first version of the Discussion module. Neat, huh? It's hard to overstate the value of this design change. You can now easily use D2L on your iPad or on your smartphone. If you're a commuter like me, it also makes it quite simple to use D2L while riding the train, or anywhere in transit. It really is a significant upgrade and I hope you have fun playing around with it.