What is Responsive Web design?
Responsive web design is an approach to web design that addresses concerns related to the different kinds of formats and mediums that people view websites with. The ubiquitous web browser was the initial medium used to view web pages, but as mobile technologies improved, marketers and consumers demanded that web sites adapt to the changing environment.
Why do websites need to be responsive?
The goal of responsive web design is to create a web presence that can adapt to any of the most popular viewing devices such as an Internet browsers, smart phones, and touch pads. HTML5 is used to code responsive web sites so that they resize automatically to fit the screen size of the device in a way that the site remains usable.
Coding a responsive web site by hand is somewhat difficult, especially for someone with no computer programming experience. Creating an old-fashioned non-responsive web site would really limit the size of your audience. Mobile devices already account for more Internet usage than computers and the trend is likely to continue. Google has already incorporated responsive web design into the algorithm used to determine the ranking of the website.
How can I make a responsive web site?
On the good side, there are prepackaged responsive web themes that can be implemented without any knowledge of HTML5, or any other programming or markup language. WordPress.org offers themes which can be used as a foundation for building a responsive web site and even including premade modules that perform various tasks like serve as feedback, gather emails for mailing lists, and enable logging onto the site using mainstream social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter.
Wordpress hosting companies such as Bluehost, InMotion, Web Hosting Hub, HostGator, and SiteGround provide low cost hosting a variety of other services. Tutorials on how to build responsive web sites using WordPress can be found on YouTube.
Testing for responsive web design is much more complicated than it was in the days when there were only web browsers. Simulators and mobile emulators have become an important in evaluating the effectiveness of the site across platforms. Adobe Edge Inspect is an example of one such tool that can be used to evaluate how well your website can adapt to a variety of mobile devices. Some browsers also offer responsive design viewports that let you resize the viewing experience to simulate a mobile browsing experience.
One of the long-term considerations is the use of resizable images. The resolution of monitors is rapidly improving. The latest Apple Retina displays have a higher pixel display (up to 5120×2880 pixels at the time of this writing), causing type and images to be smaller. The classic 600 pixel wide web site now looks like a racing stripe on today’s high resolution monitors. The point is that images need to be made reasonably large so they can scale down to the necessary size, and have room to grow as the resolution of devices grows. Another consideration with responsive web design is that pictures are often scaled and need to be visually designed so they can be viewed at small sizes, such as on a smart phone.
Written by Jack Johnston
Jack Johnston has a Master’s in Applied Linguistics from the New School University, a Master’s in Business Administration from Western Governors University, and a Master’s in Management & Leadership from Western Governors University.