What Is Responsive Web Design?

Responsive Web design is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user’s behaviour and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation.

The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and intelligent use of CSS media queries. As the user switches from their laptop to an iPad, the website should automatically switch to accommodate resolution, image size and scripting abilities. One may also have to consider the settings on their devices; if they have a VPN for iOS on their iPad, for example, the website should not block the user’s access to the page. In other words, the website should have the technology to automatically respond to the user’s preferences. This would eliminate the need for a different design and development phase for each new gadget on the market.

What Does Using Responsive Web Design Entail? 

At its essence, responsive web design is an approach that suggests design and development should be responsive to a given user’s behaviour and environment — based on screen size, platform and orientation of the device they are using. The practice consists of designing and developing software that incorporates a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and intelligent use of CSS media queries.

For example, as any user switches from their laptop to an iPad while using a particular application, the website should automatically shift to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities. This also includes accounting for the different settings on user devices. For example, if a user has a VPN for iOS on their iPad, the website should not block the user’s access to the page.

In other words, responsive web design requires that a website includes the technology to automatically respond to a user’s preferences. The benefit of this is to eliminate the need for a different design and development phase as new versions of different tech products are released to market (say, new iPhones or tablets or Android devices).

Similar to responsive architecture when designing buildings or public spaces, responsive web design focuses on using principles that allow your finished product to automatically adjust. It removes the need for a seemingly endless set of custom-made solutions for each new category of users.

To do this effectively, responsive web design requires employing a more abstract way of designing and conceiving of an application. However, as the idea has grown in popularity, some ideas are already being practised, such as media queries, fluid layouts, and scripts that can reformat Web pages and mark-up effortlessly or autonomously. But that’s just the top-level view of what responsive web design entails. Here are just a few of the specific methods and techniques that are often considered part of the responsive web design principle.

Custom Layout Structure 

Another benefit of employing responsive web design is the ability to customize the layout structure, to account for anticipated issues or changes in devices (and the features that change with them). For example, in the case of extreme size changes, developers may choose to change the layout altogether, either through a separate style sheet or even better, through a CSS media query.

In the past this was troublesome, but by using responsive design, most of the styles can remain the same. Meanwhile, specific style sheets can inherit custom styles and move elements around with floats, widths, heights and so on. If a style sheet made the layout too narrow, short, wide or tall, developers could then detect that during testing and switch to a new style sheet. This new style sheet can adopt everything from the default style sheet and then just redefine the layout’s structure, saving hours of excess coding that would be needed otherwise.

Methods for Showing and Hiding Content 

Another technique used by developers is techniques to shrink different app or software elements proportionally and rearrange elements as necessary, which can help make everything fit if someone switches to a device with a smaller screen. However, it isn’t really possible (or at least, easy) to shrink every single element of a large display to a smaller one.

Instead, responsive web designers employ some simple best practices for mobile environments: streamlined navigation, more focused content, or switching content into lists or rows instead of multiple columns. Additionally, developers can use CSS (which has been employed to show or hide content for years) to allow users to easily pick and choose content, which makes navigation throughout a particular app or data set more efficient.