These days, almost all prospective customers request a mobile version of their website. After all, having separate designs for the BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad, netbook, and Kindle is practically necessary. All screen resolutions also need to work together. We will probably need to design for several more technologies in the next five years. When will this crazy end? Of course it won’t.
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We’re rapidly reaching a stage in Web design and development where we can no longer keep up with the constant stream of new resolutions and devices. For many websites, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to create a version of the site for every resolution and new device. Should we just put up with the fallout from losing users from one device in exchange for more users on another? Or is there an other course of action?
Responsive web design: what is it?
The idea behind responsive web design is that, depending on the screen size, platform, and orientation of the user, design and development should adapt to their behavior and surroundings.
The technique uses a combination of pictures, adaptable grids and layouts, and deft CSS media query application. The website need to adapt immediately to the user’s shift from a laptop to an iPad, taking into account differences in resolution, picture size, and scripting capabilities. It could also be necessary to take into account the settings on one’s devices; for instance, if an iPad is using a VPN for iOS, the website shouldn’t prevent the user from accessing the page. Stated differently, the website need to be equipped with technology that can react to the user’s preferences on its own. This would do away with the requirement for a distinct design and development stage for every new device released onto the market.
The Principle of Adaptive Website Design
For A List Apart, Ethan Marcotte penned an introduction to the strategy known as responsive web design. It comes from the idea of responsive architecture design, which is the process by which a room or place adapts on its own to the quantity and movement of people occupying it.
If we apply this discipline to Web design, we get a whole different yet comparable concept. Why should we make a unique Web design for every user group? After all, architects don’t make buildings that are suitable for every kind and size of group that uses them. Similar to responsive architecture, Web design need to adapt on its own. There shouldn’t be an endless supply of unique solutions for every new user segment.
Naturally, we are unable to achieve this in the same manner that a building would using robots and motion sensors. Thinking more abstractly is necessary while designing responsive websites. Nonetheless, several concepts are already in use: media queries, fluid layouts, and programs that easily (or automatically) restructure HTML and markup.
However, responsive Web design is about a completely new way of thinking about design, not only about changing screen resolutions and automatically resizing pictures. Let’s discuss each of these aspects as well as upcoming concepts.
Modifying the Resolution of the Screen
As the number of devices increases, so do the screen orientations, definitions, and resolutions. Every day, new gadgets with larger screens are created, and each of these gadgets could be able to accommodate changes in terms of usefulness, size, and even color. Some are in portrait orientation, some in landscape, and some are even square in shape. Numerous modern devices have the ability to automatically flip between portrait and landscape orientations, as seen by the growing popularity of the iPhone, iPad, and sophisticated smartphones. How can one create for these kinds of circumstances?
We need to take into account the hundreds of various screen sizes in addition to planning for both landscape and portrait orientations (and perhaps enabling those orientations to transition in an instant upon page load). It is feasible to classify them into broad groups, create designs specifically for each, and adjust the flexibility of each design as needed. However, that could be too much to handle, and who can predict how much will be used in five years? Furthermore, a lot of people don’t make the most of their browsers, which leaves way too much area for different screen sizes.
Adaptable Pictures
Working with pictures is one of the main issues that responsive Web design has to address. Resizing photographs proportionally may be accomplished in a number of ways, many of which are simple to use. The most common solution is to utilize CSS’s max-width property for a quick fix; this was initially tried by Richard Rutter and is mentioned in Ethan Marcotte’s essay on fluid pictures.
Unless the viewing area gets less than the original width of the picture, all images will load in their original size provided that no other width-based image styles override this rule. Since the image’s maximum width is set to 100% of the screen or browser width, it will resize to fit the narrowest portion of 100%. Basically, the concept behind fluid pictures is to transmit images at the largest scale at which they would be used, as Jason Grigsby pointed out. Instead of declaring the height and width in your code, you let the browser to adjust the pictures’ relative sizes while use CSS to set the size as needed. It’s a really useful and easy method for artistic picture resizing.
Although IE does not allow max-width, a clever usage of width: 100% might neatly address the issue in an IE-specific style sheet. Another problem is that certain older Windows browsers don’t render images as clearly as they should when they are shrunk too tiny. However, there is a JavaScript in Ethan Marcotte’s essay that can resolve this problem.
While the aforementioned is a fantastic short fix and an excellent place to start when creating responsive photos, the main things to think about are download times and image resolution. Although downsizing a picture for mobile devices might be quite easy, if the original image size was intended for larger screens, download times may be greatly slowed down and unnecessary space may be taken up.