Responsive website design (RWD) allows site designers to create once for all devices and publish the same content everywhere. It is the website development philosophy of creating website pages in a format that is efficient, optimized, and easy to read across devices and web browsers across different platforms.
Rather than the traditional approach of designing web pages for viewing only on desktop or laptop computers, responsive design uses a variety of new web development features and functions to deliver the optimal appearance to users on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, as well as on traditional PCs and other electronic devices.
Due to smaller screen sizes, mobile devices often require a modified layout for content to help users navigate the website more efficiently, and with responsive design, web developers can code web pages with the flexibility to create readable content in a variety of ways. This is largely due to websites being able to change continuously and fluidly based on factors such as viewport width.
Responsive Website Components
Responsive website design consists of the following three main components:
Flexible layouts – Using a flexible grid to create website layout that will dynamically resize to any width.
Media queries – An extension to media types when targeting and including styles. Media queries allow designers to specify different styles for specific browser and device conditions.
Flexible media – Makes media (images, video, and other formats) scalable by changing the size of the media as the size of the viewport changes.
Responsive Web Design vs. Traditional Web Design
An example of an unresponsive web design page is text that reads well on desktop browsers but is too small, unreadable on smartphones, often with too many columns or images that will not fit within a smartphone's limited viewport display width.
In contrast, with responsive design, web developers do not need to focus on specific screen sizes; rather, responsive web codes are designed to adapt to a range of screen sizes by offering different layouts based on the screen size and capabilities of the mobile device or computer.
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