In this generation, there are already many devices that support online browsing features. More and more people are using smartphones and tablets to browse the internet. But unfortunately, trying to view from one of these devices isn’t always a good especially if websites don’t adapt or adjust to your device’s screen size. Developing different versions of the website for the purpose of matching it with different screen sizes is very impractical especially if you have 5 or 10 devices to look at. To address the issue, web developers are moving towards responsive web design. Although it will take some time to primarily set up a responsive website, it will take less time the long run especially when making updates on the site and it is a guarantee to give your users a good experience in viewing your website in different platforms.
Responsive generally means to react quickly and positively to any change. Responsive web design is the practice of crafting a website suitable to work on every device and every screen size, no matter how large or small be it mobile, tablet or desktop. It is focused on providing an intuitive and gratifying experience for the users. It promotes easy reading and navigation across a wide array of devices. Responsive websites dynamically adapt to different browser and device screen sizes, changing layout and content accordingly. Responsive Web Design generally uses three mechanisms namely, flexible layouts, media queries, and flexible media.
- Flexible layout is the process of designing the layout of a website with a flexible grid capable of resizing to any width or screen size.
- Media queries provide the ability to specify different styles for individual browser and device circumstances.
- Flexible media means that images, videos and other media types also need to be adaptive to any screen size.
Changing their size as the size of the viewport or viewing environment changes. There are now a couple of ways to validate and test responsive web design, ranging from mobile site validators and mobile emulators to simultaneous testing tools like Adobe Edge Inspect or simply just access your element inspector and click on the responsive mode.
One advantage of Responsive Web Design is that only one website is needed. Most clients normally want two versions of a website, a regular desktop version and a mobile version but it is not a good way to go because it will take time and effort to build two separate sites. Maintenance in the future will be a pain in the arse because you have two sites to take care. Responsive Web Design allows your site to adjust to different screen size, be it on a smartphone, tablet or desktop thus eliminating the need for two separate versions. Another advantage is that Google prefers responsive sites when it comes to search engine optimization. This increases the chances of your site being on the top results of related searches. And lastly, it gives great user experience. A well put together responsive web design is the simplest way for users to interact with the website.
