What is responsive web design?
Responsive web design is a term that describes the concept of building a website in a way that allows the layout to change depending on what screen resolution the viewer has. Why? Well it is simply because computers are no longer the only devices with web browsers. With the advent of smartphones and tablets, the way users browse the internet has changed. And as a user you would want to have the same experience of browsing the net on any device. This presented a new challenge to web designers. How?
The screen resolution of the desktop computer and that of a phone or tablet are different. And to cater for this, the initial response was to design one web site for the desktop computer and the other for the mobile device. If you think about it, this is not a bad idea. However, this has its own shortcomings. Mobile devices are ever changing in size, so to design a single website that can cater again for the different sizes is a problem. And it is not only just small screens either. Large high-resolution displays are starting to become much more common than they used to be.
In short, the spectrum of screen sizes and resolutions is changing every day, and creating a different version of a website that target each individual device is not a practical way forward. This is where responsive web design comes to the rescue. Create one website that can be rendered on any device. In the next post I am going to go deeper with responsive web design showing you how you can create one.
