Precisely what is Responsive Design?

Responsive Design lets websites ‘adapt’ to various screen sizes without compromising usability and consumer experience. Text, UI elements, and pictures rescale and resize with respect to the viewport.

Responsive design allows developers to write down an individual set of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code for multiple devices, platforms, and browsers. Responsive design is device-agnostic and aligns using the popular development philosophy of Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY).

But there’s more for it . It could be tough to make a pre-existing site responsive, nevertheless the benefits of buying responsive design ahead of time inside a project far outweigh the effort necessary to do it.

This post covers the evolution of responsive design, the fundamental components making it work, as well as a help guide creating and testing responsive web applications.

The Evolution of Responsive Design

Inside the late 1990s, when browser wars were effectively reaching a (shortlived) end, most users had one browser (Internet Explorer) using one operating-system (Microsoft Windows). That they one device (desktop) with screen sizes which were about consistent everywhere. Designing websites because of these specifications didn’t involve abstracting differences between numerous browser engines, platforms, and devices-it may be finished with components of static sizes.

Eventually, web-developers began creating components whose dimensions were per percentages in accordance with the viewport. This process allowed the constituents on the browser window. This philosophy came to be called ‘fluid design’.

Really, Ethan Marcotte published a piece of writing where he spoke of ‘Responsive Web Design’. The article discussed the range of devices that readers used to connect to the web-which meant accounting for screen sizes, browsers, orientations, and modes of interaction while creating content for the kids. This post changed the way in which developers approached website design.

Towards the end of 2016, mobile browsing overtook browsing the web. This further emphasized the value of thinking mobile-first when it came to web design.

Today, industry has over 9000 different mobile phones, using own dimensions and graphics processing capabilities. Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites in their search results. In 2019, you should not increase your online reach without a responsive website.

Responsive Web page design: Setting the Scope

Before developing a responsive website, take a look at your target market and audience. The aim is to figure out:

The users access the web: Research your site’s traffic analytics and mix the insights with Test for the Right Devices report to understand the top 10 browsers/devices in your audience.

Do you know the website’s ‘core’ features: These must render uniformly across browsers/devices. Everything else could be increased in later iterations.

Responsive Website Testing

Once you’ve successfully made a responsive website, you have to test to ensure it may:

Display and align this content consistently.

Render text legibly on all scales and viewports.

Keep content (text and images) within their containers.

Display and resize images when needed.

Allow users to scroll vertically (or horizontally, such as true of responsive data tables).

Let users navigate via links and menus on all devices.

Scale/resize content determined by portrait or landscape orientations in cellular devices.

In a responsive test, start by manually testing the site on various viewport sizes to find out if the information scales to suit correctly. To discover inconsistencies in colors, fonts, illustrations, etc. you will have to perform a mobile responsive test using real mobile phones.

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