Responsive Web Design
As you read the heading Responsive Web Design, you may start to anticipate or guess what the term suggests. But probably, majority of the tech-savvy people, already know about this Web Design and doesn’t need any introduction to this term. But for people who are new to this word, also can easily apprehend its meaning, by observing the keyword, Responsive. Yes, in this context, Responsive conveys the readiness of adapting to the given environment i.e staying true to its purpose.
So what does the term mean and what is its modus-operandi?
Responsive Web Design also called as Mobile Responsive Websites, are Websites which you can design, to make the content in them, readily adapt across all the Major Screen Sizes. That is Your Desktop computer, Laptop, Tablets or Phablets and your Smartphone devices. In the Sense that, you will deliver your content, without any compromise, for your varied device users.
The Man Behind this Design
In 2010, Ethan Marcotte, a web designer, came up with the term Responsive web design to break the limitations of the Web Applications. In other words, a motive to amplify the use of Websites. So the web pages you view, are effective to the cause and user-friendly. He also authored a book in the same name.
Why the Need for Responsive Web Design?
As we all know, Business owners need a Website to Market their Products. But that seemed insufficient, when Smartphone devices evoked their frenzy all over the globe. Because almost everyone wanted to access the Internet World, through their Smartphone devices.
So the increase in the use of mobile devices, called for a more responsive version of Websites. That is, as quickly adapting to the advancement of technology. Thus to cater to this need, Ethan Marcotte came forward with the idea of Responsive Websites.
The Principles of the Responsive Web Design(RWD)
So how does these RWDs work? Principally there are three majors through which RWD works.
- Fluid Grids
- Media Queries
- Flexible Images
Fluid Grids:
Fluid Grids do the job of rendering a Responsive Layout, according to the Screen resolution. Their usage in Responsive Design is, mainly because they produce result in Percentage as opposed to Pixels. So using the exact percentage, they render the content in columns, as grids divide the web page into columns. Now your content fits to the particular screen size according to your users device view-port. As Market is brimming with huge variety of devices, Fluid Grids helps greatly in providing one solution of providing flexible layouts for all kinds of devices.
Media Queries
The Process of creating a responsive design doesn’t stop with Fluid Grids. Apart from grids, the design customarily calls for Media queries. Because they are the ones who completes the process of successfully creating a Responsive Web Design.
In essence, Media queries are the styling or conditional statements, which CSS3 file currently use. Their primary objective is to choose the style of the websites, according to the different types of devices’ screen resolutions, only if certain conditions are met. Also they read the capacity of the devices, to adjust the content and design of the website depending on the screen and view-ports’ width and height, device orientation (landscape and portrait), resolution and more.
So we can say the main purpose of Responsive Design is achieved, through Media queries. Because Media queries with their conditional statements, make a single website content, get adapted across all kinds of devices.
Flexible Images
Flexible Images and Media work the same way as Fluid grids. That is using the percentage of the pixels. The formula is Target ÷ Context = Result. Here, you have to divide the actual pixel of an image you are going to use(target) and the exact pixel of a device, you are designing for(context). So using the exact percentage, it will apply the image according to the layout.
Also Flexible Images work on two properties.
- CSS Overflow Property – The Overflow property decides whether to clip content or add scrollbar, to view the content more when it overflows in a particular device.
- Scaling or Transform – This property is used to create 2D or 3D transformations of an element in the content and also add images and video according to percentage, not pixel widths.
These three Backbones of the Responsive Design, will no matter what, render your users a great usability, flexibility and also a seamless experience when they make use of their website.
So Responsive Web Design sounds exciting? Get more from Responsive Design as we at JKL Technologies provide the A-Z of the Web Development Process.
