We all understand how important web design is in business and marketing, but why do we always prefer the web to be responsive? And what is the purpose of responsive web design? In this article, we will explore this topic in detail.
What Is Responsive Web Design?
Responsive web design has become an integral part of online business, as it is a basic standard in developing modern websites, especially with the spread of mobile devices and the diversity of screen sizes.
So, what is the purpose of responsive web design? It aims to improve websites so that the website content is suitable for all types and sizes of devices to offer a satisfying user experience.
Responsive Design vs. Adaptive Design
To understand what is the purpose of responsive web design you should first know that people sometime confuse between responsive design and adaptive web design.
Adaptive web design is a technique used to create a different website layout for each device’s screen. The website detects the screen size as it loads and presents the layout optimized for that viewport, so it would be incredibly time-consuming to create a website for various screen sizes. Whereas responsive web design takes less work and time than adaptive design since responsive websites are seen as mobile-friendly, they also perform higher in search engine rankings.
What Is the Purpose of Responsive Web Design?
Responsive web design is crucial for web designers, as it relieves them from having to spend an entire day creating and developing websites for every single device. Here are the benefits of responsive web design:
- It offers a successful user experience for various screen sizes and devices, so users can simply switch across devices and still enjoy the content without any loss in functionality.
- It can improve SEO since websites that engage users with fast load speeds, responsive layouts, and an overall pleasant user experience (UX) are favored by search engines such as Google.
- Cost-effectiveness is another advantage of responsive web design. Because there is only one site instead of two, it is also simpler for you to handle.
- It allows websites to be accessible and functional even on smaller screens, such as smartphones.
- It allows for consistent branding across all devices.
- It allows the user to rapidly access any information he/ she wants to look at without spending time going through redirects.
How to Create a Responsive Web Design?
You should apply some principles when building your responsive website, such as:
Fluid Grid System
The basic idea behind a grid is that regardless of how large or small the screen gets, each component takes up the same percentage of space. This allows the components to adjust in size as the user switches between devices.
Media Queries
With the use of media queries, you can create filters that adjust your design to fit any screen size by detecting the dimensions of the browsing device. To layout the page according to the user’s demands, media queries apply CSS selectively.
Breakpoints
Also, you can use breakpoints with media queries to make sure that your website’s content will be rearranged to give the user the greatest experience possible.
Viewport Meta Tag
With the help of the viewport meta tag, mobile browsers may display a page at the mobile-optimized size you intended by scaling it to 100% of the device width and setting the viewport width accordingly, for example, the viewport meta tag in your HTML to control the layout on mobile browsers.
Mobile-First Design
For everyone asking what is the purpose of responsive web design it is crucial that you know that you should always begin by creating the smallest possible screen size first. By using this method, you can be sure that your design will work well on mobile devices and expand to fill larger screens without losing quality.
Flexible Images and Media
Make sure that media, including photos, scales appropriately within the items that surround them. To stop photos from filling their containers, you use CSS approaches.
Responsive typography
The term “responsive typography” refers to altering the font size within media queries or adjusting the viewport unit size to accommodate varying screen sizes. and you should replace fixed units with relative ones for determining font sizes to make sure that text adjusts to screen sizes and user preferences appropriately.
Fundamentals of Responsive Web Design
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
A wide range of effective CSS techniques are available for creating attractive web pages, as they are utilized to customize a web page’s layout and control across various browsers.
Flexbox
Flexbox is a CSS module that is implemented to increase layout efficiency for various elements. The main benefit is that flexbox layouts function regardless of the dimensions of the elements contained in each container.
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML, is essential for organizing material and laying the foundation for CSS to style and make it responsive.
Multicol
When using multicol, you can set the maximum number of columns into which you wish the content to be divided by giving it a column count. The size of these is then determined by the browser and varies based on the screen size.
Animations and transitions
You should make smooth motions and changes for attributes like color, size, and location.
Cross-Browser Compatibility
Verify and test the compatibility of styles with various browsers and devices, and you can use prefixes and tools.
Responsive Web Design Testing Tools
It’s very important to make sure that your responsive web design is ready to use for all types of devices and screens, so there are some tools to help you, such as:
Responsive Design Checker
It opens your website in a window where you can alter the size and examine various device orientations. This helps check breakdowns.
Google Mobile-Friendly Test
It enables you to quickly do a mobile site test to determine how responsive a website is to mobile devices.
Lambda Test
It checks for pixel accuracy, user experience, and compatibility. It tests on various devices and browser versions, so you can be sure your website functions as intended.
Cross Browser Testing
It is an advanced tool that allows for both automatic and manual testing. It offers a strong test configuration that allows you to identify errors in the design before they become significant problems.
Summary
Thus, we have explained everything about the responsive web, but if you are still asking what is the purpose of the responsive web? then briefly, it is a technique employed to design websites in a way that offers the best possible viewing and interacting experience across a variety of devices.