Now this is just madness at its worst. How is a business supposed to have several versions of the same website for a dozen of screen sizes?
Responsive design is the solution that takes care of all screen sizes and user behaviours.
With a little innovation in CSS media queries, a flexible grid and fluid images, responsive design changes websites and markup depending on the scripting capabilities of the device and obviously the size of the screen.
Read more about How to improve CSS of a website
Background and History of Responsive Web Design
Ethan Marcotte is the man behind the word 'responsive web design'. He was influenced by technical advances in architecture giving architects the freedom to create spaces that interacted with the inhabitants.
Window panes that would use motion sensing hardware to change transparency levels and walls that would twist to allow occupants to pass through interested Mr. Marcotte and he envisioned the same for websites.
The time was perfect and smart devices with varying screen sizes were becoming popular at a fast pace.
He wanted designs and devices to be 'facets of the same experience'. The new design philosophy was evolutionary, adaptive and responsive. It overcame device screen restriction with ease. Thanks to standard technologies, his philosophy has become the norm of the day with every web development London agency.
Anyone working in a professional web design company is expected to know some basics before beginning responsive web design.
The first would be the difference between screen size and viewport. Viewport is the actual area within the browser where content (texts and images) are displayed, whereas the screen size is the physical dimension of the device display. Secondly, CSS3 and HTML5 has made responsive websites better, it is not new to the designing world.
A professional web design company expert could easily tweak his jQuery and make a few adjustments.
Here are 5 tips from a professional web design company that has been on the forefront of responsive design since the day the term got coined.
1. Responsive Media Queries
When a web designer tells the webpage to change layout for each screen size (viewport width), a responsive media query is said to have been put in place. The designer uses CSS3 to accomplish this, alternatively he can use HTML5 tags too, but the ideal candidate for responsive media queries is CSS3.
Here is a code snippet:
/*for screen size 980px or less*/
@media screen and (max-width: 980px)
#pagewrap
Width: 94%;
#content
Width: 65%;
#sidebar
Width: 30%;
2. Playing with Values
The second trick up the designer's sleeve is making the value dance to his will. Web development London experts like it because it simplifies coding and optimizes layout. Padding around images and margins between elements can be adjusted using percentage values instead of absolute pixels values. Percentages are better at making areas look bigger as compared to fixed pixel settings. Fonts come next and for smaller viewports you will require smaller ones.
3. Responsive Word Breaks
There is not much new to word breaks either, but with the latest standards, a designer can make things look heaps better. Instead of texts breaking off at odd parts at edges, now they can make it flow around other elements much more fluidly and elegantly.
4. Fluid Images
It's hard to get images to respond as fast and fluidly as texts. Sometimes the rendering is not that great or the images get cropped at vital points making it useless! Then there are old browsers to worry about.
Ethan Marcotte has a work around for old browsers. For new browsers, the trick is in getting the image to pan out for the maximum allowable viewport. No matter what the viewport size is, the image will always be 100% of that. To get better results let the image resize with CSS as its guide.
Related: What is new in CSS3
5. Hiding Overflow
Get rid of the float of the previous elements and let the content hide when it exceeds the boundary of the container. Doing this has a downside though: some text becomes invisible when it violates the container limit. This is definitely not desirable for a professional web design company.
So they invented a fix. Adding word-wrap: break-word to the container keeps the text within the container, breaking sentences off properly with no scrollbar to spoil the look!
Here is the snippet:
.container
word-wrap: break-word;
Responsive web design is still in its infancy. Keep your eyes glued to this space and be in contact with your professional web design agency for latest updates.
