Responsive Web Design

How websites can possibly keep up with crores of screens out there? That would be with the assistance of Responsive Web Design or RWD design.

Responsive websites signify that your website along with its pages has the capability to adapt and deliver the best experience to users. It doesn’t matter that whether they are on their laptop, desktop, tablet, or smartphone. Your website has the requirement of a responsive design to make it happen.

What is Responsive Design?

Are you getting confused with the question that what is Responsive Design? Well, responsive design of the website is the approach that recommends the website design & development must facilitate the users with a better response on the basis of screen size, orientation, & platform.

This practice comprehends a mix of images, flexible grids, & layout. In addition to this, this mix also contains CSS media queries. When the user switches from their laptops to their iPad. The website must be capable of automatically switching to accommodate for resolution, scripting abilities, and image size.

A person might also have to take into consideration the settings on their devices. It is when they have a VPN for iOS on their iPad. For instance, the website must not block the access of users to the page.

In other words, the website must have the technology to ultimately respond to the priorities of the users. It would eliminate the requirements of the users for a different design and development phase for each new gadget available on the market.

Elements of Responsive Web Design

The three major elements in responsive web design are Flexible media, Fluid Grid, & Media queries respectively. The use of these is for designing a responsive website.

Fluid Grid

• The flexible grid is used to take the percentage approach by defining the width in the form of a percentage value. It is instead of defining the web container with fixed width.
• There is the possibility of replacing pixels with percentage values in the width attribute of the container in CSS. This approach is going to solve the problem of devices of today’s times with numerous screen resolutions.
• When you view a website on a modern web browser. It does the interpretation of the style that is in percentage and renders accordingly.

Flexible Media

• The drawback of rendering media might be overcome by making use of a relative unit, the percentage in CSS.
• The technique for escalading the media with its container is also obtained by making use of “max-width: 100%”. It is attributed to the CSS properties of media elements.
• It creates the possibility of overcoming the scaling of media with respect to its container. In addition to this, media will also not occupy more than 100% width of the container.
• Images and videos are scaled properly because of this property with respect to media devices and containers’ viewpoints.

Media Queries

• Media Query is a CSS 3 module that facilitates different types of media and features. It is for adapting diverse styles for individual device orientation, device viewpoint, and many more.
• It comprises different types of media, handheld, projection, print, screen, TV, braille, print, etc.
• Media query gives the solution to the problems of not being capable of defining a particular CSS. It is for a certain range of viewpoints and gives way for designing responsive web pages.

Why should you Invest in Responsive Web Design?

As we are living in a multi-screen society. It becomes extremely crucial for your website to be viewable across various devices possibly. The reason is that you would never know that what device a person will use to view your website.

A responsive web design has its appeal to both desktop and mobile viewers. The number of mobile viewers in today’s times is more than desktop viewers. And this number will continue to enhance with the enhance in the accessibility of global smartphones.

The benefits of choosing a responsive design for your website are inclusive of:

• Cost-effectiveness
• Flexibility
• Improved user experience
• Search engine optimization gains

Cost-effectiveness

It might be expensive for you to maintain separate sites for your mobile and non-mobile audiences. You can save a huge amount of your money by doing eliminating the cost of paying for a mobile website. You can do so by making use of responsive design.

There will not be any requirement of investing in a single website design to appeal to all devices and all visitors.

Flexibility

You can quickly and easily make changes to your website with responsive design. You don’t have any need to bother about making changes on two websites.

Improved User Experience

User experience is extremely crucial to website owners. No one takes interest in doing business with a place that is unprofessional. But, a responsive web design that facilitates a better user experience, might assist in compelling people to serve your company a chance.

It is because scrolling and zooming will get eliminated. People can quickly view the content. And in addition to this, the overall impression that visitors have will be much more positive.

Search Engine Gains

Responsive designs of websites assist with SEO also. The reason is that Google gives preferences to websites that are mobile-friendly. Responsiveness can assist in serving you with a big boost in search engine results in combination with SEO factors.

Best Practices for Responsive Design

You design for flexibility in each aspect with responsive design- text, images, and layouts. So, you should:

• Take the “mobile-first” approach:

To make it best suitable for larger screens, scale-up phone-sized designs.

Always keep in mind that mobile users have the requirement of large (>40 points) buttons. In addition to this, your design must be twice as intuitive as desktop equivalents. The reason is the requirement for a well-sized element on smaller screens might be the reason for confusion and cramping.

• Create images and fluid grids:

Do the creation of images in their native dimension. If you don’t have sufficient space, then crop them for the maximization of impact.

• Make use of only Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs):

For 2D graphics, there is an XML-based file format, which gives support to the animations and interactivity.

• Incorporate 3 or more breakpoints (i.e., design for more than 3 devices).

Give priority and hide content to meet the contexts of the users. Check your visual hierarchy and utilize progressive disclosure & navigation drawers. It is to facilitate users with the required items at first. Also, keep nonessential items (nice-to-haves) secondary.

• Aim for minimalism.

Apply design patterns: For the maximization of the ease of use in their contexts and for quickening their familiarity: e.g., the column drop pattern fits content to numerous types of screens.

• The objective for accessibility with font styles or sizes:

Make use of background and contrast effectively. Create headlines at least 1.6 times larger than body text. Create all text in the responsive form, to make it appear in these proportions.

Make all of your text “real” instead of text within images. The reason is that some users are dependent on screen readers.

Conclusion

Overall, responsive design is an economical and powerful approach. If the success stories of the responsive websites don’t convince you to turn to this way of website designing. Then, let the time and cost savings convince you.

Responsive web design is a necessary part of any modern web strategy. And, it should be part of yours, also.

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