Basic Knowledge About Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design is an approach to web design which makes web pages render well on a variety of devices and window or screen sizes. The aim is to provide an optimal viewing experience to a mobile device user. The user could easily read through and navigate the contents of a Website on his or her mobile device, be it a smartphone or a tablet.

Why You Need Responsive Web Design

Mobile users’ behavior is generally seen to be quite fickle. They are looking for quick answers while on the go. You can keep users engaged provided that you give equally quick and satisfying answers to their queries. If not, they would end up losing interest in you and your products just as quickly.

In order to make your Website perfectly compatible with mobile devices, you will have to work on two major aspects, namely, the content layout and Website navigation.

A mobile phone has far lesser screen space than a traditional PC screen. Hence, the contents of your Website should be so manipulated as to make it easy for the user to view the content on the screen. It would make more sense, for instance, to create longer columns of content than have 2 or 3 rows of different content.

Most of the latest smartphones do permit the user to zoom the onscreen contents, thereby permitting them to view the entire contents of the Website on their mobile device. However, it can get frustrating for the user to keep searching for one particular element on the screen. They would get a much better user experience if you could prominently display the most important elements on the screen.

As the user switches from their laptop to tablet, the website should automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities. In other words, the website should have the technology to automatically respond to the user’s preferences. This would eliminate the need for a different design and development phase for each new gadget on the market.

Adjusting Screen Resolution

With more devices come varying screen resolutions, definitions and orientations. New devices with new screen sizes are being developed every day, and each of these devices may be able to handle variations in size, functionality and even color. Some are in landscape, others in portrait, still others even completely square. As we know from the rising popularity of the iPhone, iPad and advanced smartphones, many new devices are able to switch from portrait to landscape at the user’s whim.

Potrait vs landscape resolution. From www.smashingmagazine.com

Part of the Solution: Flexible Everything

A few years ago, when flexible layouts were almost a “luxury” for websites, the only things that were flexible in a design were the layout columns (structural elements) and the text. Images could easily break layouts. They often couldn’t adjust from a large computer screen to a netbook.

Example of a cropped logo and layout. From https://www.smashingmagazine.com

 Art Equals Work layout in computer screen. From https://www.smashingmagazine.com

 Art Equal Work layout on mobile device. From https://www.smashingmagazine.com

Art Equals Work is a simple yet great example of responsive Web design. The first screenshot is the view from a standard computer screen dimension. The website is flexible with browser widths by traditional standarts, but once the browser gets too narrow or is otherwise switched to a device with a smaller screen, then the layout switches to a more readable and user-friendly format. The sidebar disappears, navigation goes to the top, and text is enlarged for easy and simple vertical reading.

Conclusion

Responsive Web design is not only about adjustable screen resolutions and automatically resizable images, but rather about a whole new way of thinking about design. It shouldn’t be just about how to create a flexible layout on a wide range of platforms and screen sizes. It should also be about the user being able to pick and choose content. (eas)

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