In today’s fast paced world of technology, almost everything on how to obtain information has been revolutionized. The emergence of technologically rich smart phones and tablets have created an “always connected” world where people want, or need to be online all the time. People now have easy access to all types of information and are no longer restricted to desktops. People from all generations, be it the “old or the young” all have become accustomed to these super fast gadgets, which in turn has led to more web access and web research. This emerging trend has increased the desire of all the companies to have a RESPONSIVE WEBSITE, one which can be accessed from the desktop, Smartphone or a tablet.
Companies in order to do so, need to have RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN or RWD. RWD is an approach that aims to create websites to provide an optimal viewing experience which includes easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices starting from mobile phones or tablets to desktop computer monitors.
To put it simply, “it is an adaptive website that has the ability to respond to whatever device is accessing it. This provides users with an optimal web experience regardless of how they are accessing your website.”
This practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and an intelligent use of CSS media queries. As the user switches from their laptops to their smartphones or tablets, the website should automatically switch to accommodate for resolution, image size and scripting abilities. To keep it simple, the website should have the technology to automatically respond to the user’s preferences. This in turn eliminates the need to have a different design and development phase for each new gadget that comes out in the market.
The term RWD was invented by “Ethan Marcotte”, in 2010. He came out with a unique idea that Web designs are not only about adjustable screen resolutions and automatically resizable images, but rather about a whole new way of thinking about design and creating it. The creation of the responsive web design goes through the following processes:-
First thing that needs to be kept in mind is the layout design.A lot of thinking goes into it. The designing of the website should be done considering that it should not only be compatible with the desktop but also the smartphone and the tablet. A client may want his website to be compatible with different gadgets and should work on multiple devices.
Secondly, images should be flexible and automatically adjusted. It should give the benefit, that images can easily switch from one mode of a gadget to another from one size to another. The sizes, Pixels and quality while structuring should be wisely considered and should support on all web browsers.
If the pictures are not sized proper they would come out to be poor or low quality. The aim should be to provide high resolution and high quality images.
Responsive Web Design should be only about the structuring but should also give the easy of choosing the content the user might want to read and hides the content he is not interested in.
Web designers should try to structure and design websites that aim to provide solutions, so that any website can be opened in all the modern and trendy gadgets with high resolutions and easy navigation. RWD should aim to provide a customized solutions to the modern day users and their need to search information.