An Exploration of Responsive Web Design

As we all know, the unsurpassed planet in the universe is Earth mainly because it supports life. To our wonder this terrestrial zone is now dominated by an extensive range of lifeless gadgets. Just imagine a single day in your life without your mobile phone/laptop or your favorite gadget? Everything looks upside down right? Yes, that is the kind of revolution that these devices have instilled in our lives. The function of the web designers in this modern era have augmented intensely with the technological expansion resulting in the increase in devices. Websites are vital to prove your business potential and your website can be viewed from any gadgets ranging from a small phone till the large desktop computer. Numerous companies toil to present web pages that fits the size of all types of devices. Here comes the compelling need of a ‘responsive web design’.

A responsive web design is one that facilitates businesses to create striking user experiences by optimizing the web pages for a widespread category of devices. This reduces the need of expensive development methods that are gadget-specific. This progressive approach introduced by Ethan Marcotte puts an end to the limitations of the physical page and persuades web designers to craft dynamic designs that can re-position, reflow and resize pertinently based on the size of the user’s screen.

What it is and how to use it: With the surfacing of many internet-capable devices like Smartphones, laptops, desktops, netbooks, and tablets along with the assorted range of screen resolutions, there comes the need of mustering web pages that fits these multiple devices. A responsive web design is the newest innovation based on specific needs in the website designing and development province. The basic intention is to design applications and websites that are receptive to the environment and behavior of the user based on the platform, screen size and orientation. Responsive web design is a combination of fluid images, flex grids, layouts, CSS media queries and much more. This enhances the user experience in terms of problem-free readability and navigation.

CSS3 Media Queries: CSS3 (Cascading Style Sheets) media queries helps in deciding the way your site is displayed in a clear-cut manner. It is like getting mobile, tablet, laptop, and desktop websites together. CSS3 has numerous features like device-width, orientation, min-device-width, color, max-device-width, backgrounds and borders modules supporting browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari. Working on a media query with the aid of CSS3 helps in targeting devices that support media features. With CSS3 media queries, multiple style sheets along with basic layout changes targeted to fit various ranges of widths can also be created. The best way to employ all your media queries is to put them all in a single Cascading Style Sheet along with the rest of the styles for your website. By this method you can avoid making multiple style sheets for multiple requests.

Fluid Grid: Fluid Grid is a web grid system that enables the designers to utilize real screen designs on big screens and maintain the same tremendous design on smaller screens. This grid system is a combination of a baseline grid and a typographic grid into a single resolution-independent scaffold.

Fluid Images: Fluid images can also be called as flexible images. This is a significant part of a responsive web design. Fluid image revolves through your document and replaces the images in support of a transparent GIF. After which it pertains the AlphaImageLoader property to each image. This function helps in resizing and repeatedly revising the proper script with a proportional width and height of the image and amends the spacer graphic consequently. This Fluid image function is regarded as one of the most challenging attribute of a responsive web design.

Responsive web design has abridged the strenuous work of ingenious web designers and gives room for their creativity to pour in discovering various other web wonders.

Author Bio:

Forix is a Website Design Portland company offering web design and development services. The Portland Web Design is highly experienced in design of informational & eCommerce websites for small businesses and startups. Call toll free 1-800-818-2361 for details today!