Responsive website design: The number of electronic devices that today’s generation uses far exceeds the combined usage of all previous generations. Responsive web design, a technical approach, easily adapts different web pages to various devices with varying screen sizes and windows, including tablets, desktops, and smartphones, without distorting web design elements.
When did this approach originate?
The primary goal of creating a responsive design is to offer all users a satisfying and intuitive experience. Ethan Marcotte coined and predominantly developed this approach. Moreover, he wrote a book titled ‘Responsive Web Design,’ which is highly recommended for developers.
Additionally, the term ‘responsive’ describes something that can react swiftly and positively to change, which is why it is used in website design. Responsive website design allows sites to fluidly and continuously adjust to different factors like viewport width. Such a design can dynamically adapt to various browser viewports, changing content and layouts. HTML and CSS are used to adjust the size, reduce or enlarge, or even shift the content to ensure it looks great on any screen.
Components of responsive web design
The responsive design comprises of the following three components:
- Flexible media
- Media queries
- Flexible layouts
Flexible media does not make use of fixed measurement units such as inches or pixels. The reason for this is the varying viewport width and height from one device to another. Layouts of websites need to adapt to change, but fixed values have far too many constraints.
Based on media types usually found while targeting and including various styles, media queries were built as an extension to these. Such media queries are able to specify varies styles for individual browsers as well as device circumstances, viewport width and device orientations being examples. By making use of targeted styles, a world of leverage and opportunity opens up with regards to responsive web design.
Inclusion of responsive images
One of the key components of a responsive website is a collection of responsive images. These are the pictures which can be scaled to fit the size of any browser. Such images can be adjusted for the website with suitable CSS knowledge. Designers will need to be able to work on the width property in CSS. A number of CSS frameworks allow creation of responsive websites. Most of these are free, and are quite easy to use.
Meet any client, and they are bound to ask you for a mobile version of their websites. The number of e-commerce stores are also growing day by day, which means that there is very high demand for such web design. Wait and watch the next five years, and you will see web designs being made for many more inventions. Is there any possibility of a stop to this madness? Professionals in the field certainly do not seem to think so.
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