The days of creating web pages for one desktop are now well and truly gone. The advancement of technology and the proliferation of mobile-friendly websites are forcing web developers to think about how their work will be displayed across a variety of devices. Think about what amount of browsing time you spend doing on your smartphone as opposed to. your computer? Enter: responsive website design.
How do you define responsive design? –
Simply put”responsive web design” (RWD) is a technique that allows the design and code to adjust to the screen size of the device. This means that you get the best viewing experience, regardless of whether it’s the size of a smartphone with 4 inches as well as an iPad mini or a cinema-sized 40-inch display.
The most responsive websites employ flexible grids, flexible images, and CSS style to modify the layout of the website and display it in accordance with the size of your browser. The goal of designers is to seamlessly adapt your UI as well as UX of a web layout across different platforms and devices.
Why is responsive design so important? –
If we developed and designed many versions of a site that would work on every device this process would not be feasible time-wise and be extremely expensive! This would also render websites unresponsive to technological changes in the future and render them almost inaccessible to maintenance. Responsive design is a great way to ensure your website is ready for the future.
One of the most important aspects of designing a responsive website is understanding your target audience and the device they’re using to browse your site. What percentage of your website traffic is desktop or. tablet and. smartphones? Approximately 56 percent of the traffic on US websites comes via mobile devices. At the present, there are 2.6 billion users of smartphones in the US, and in 2020, that number is expected to surpass six billion. The mobile design industry has never been more crucial.
It’s crucial to design your website to work on different devices, however, it becomes more difficult when designing for different browsers. Each major browser comes with its own mobile version and renders websites differently. The problem is the fact that there exists a multitude of versions of browsers that have to be accommodated for. You can’t think that everyone is on the most recent version. Therefore, it’s essential that the design is functional and reacts to a variety of browsers.
Are you pondering how to design to be web-friendly? Don’t worry, it’s an ongoing battle for all those in the business to ensure that the design is compatible with every browser version and hardware device. The best solution is to check your website on as many devices both new and old as possible. (And employ a highly skilled developer!)
What website dimensions do I need to design my website for? –
There isn’t a “standard size for websites.” The internet is awash with a myriad of devices in the world, and the sizes and resolutions of screens change constantly. Each website is a magnet for users with various gadgets. For instance, you’re much more likely to read the recipe on your smartphone (when you’re cooking) as well as more likely to look for the Photoshop instructional video on your computer (you know that time when you’re trying to find out how to do something with Photoshop).
It is possible to determine which size and browsers are the most well-liked by looking through Google Analytics. In the face of an endless array of sizes of browsers and devices, how can you design your site to be responsive without losing your focus?
Create at least 3 designs –
A responsive design for a website should include at least three layouts that can be used for different widths of browsers. The numbers we provide are the ones we are currently using at 99designs, but they aren’t rigid and fast guidelines.
- Small: under 600px. This is how content appears on the majority of smartphones.
- Medium: 600px – 900px. This is how the content will appear on most tablets, a few big phones, as well as small netbook computers.
- High Resolution: over 900px. This is how the content will appear on the majority of the personal computer.
Each of these layouts must have identical text as well as graphic elements, but they should be designed to show the content in accordance with the device used by the user. Sizing down the pages to accommodate smaller screens will render the content difficult to read, however when you expand the content with respect to another and then change to one column, it becomes easier to read.
Things to be considered –
- The user experience is the most important aspect: responsive design needs to be more than just converting the desktop page to a mobile-friendly screen. We must consider how users experience the site, their interactions as well as the content they’re searching for on the mobile device.
- Don’t create your website to be compatible with the latest mobile devices with certain screen size. Instead, design your site around your content. What layout and the elements perform on desktops and how will the same elements work with one another on a mobile device?
- Engage: the hierarchy of the layout is extremely important, particularly on mobile. In many cases, it is better to have less! The experience for mobile users as compared to desktops is more focused and has a smaller amount of space. Therefore, the way that users browse and navigate through your website should be clear enough to convey the message and know what the site is about. Think about the primary goal of the site. If the main objective is to have people click a “contact us” button, then don’t bury it on the page under blocks of text. Create your content and layout to reflect that experience.
- Images that are flexible are crucial for designing responsive websites. It is important to consider how images will be scaled. What would it look like on a big desktop as opposed? an iPad and. the smaller screen of a mobile? From a developer’s viewpoint, this code will allow images to be scaled using an amount percentage to the size that the web browser’s window.
- Navigation is crucial on mobile. There are a variety of ways to collate massive menus and contents. This could be done in the classic hamburger-style menu as well as a simple dropdown menu field, expand/collapse or collapse fields, or Tabs which scroll vertically, like YouTube.
- Gestures provide new design possibilities. People enjoy engaging with their hands when reading and interactivity with the text. It makes the user more active. With tablets and mobiles, users can use their fingers to zoom or drag pictures across their screen. Interaction is a major factor in the design. In the case of an example, if own an image gallery, try not to use a traditional carousel (small dots) that allows users to move through the images. Consider the size of one’s finger and how it can translate into a practical UI solution. Based on Apple: the comfortable minimum size for application-based UI elements is 44x44px. The limit is frequently broken and the reality of the limit is about 25 px. Complex desktop designs must be able to adjust to simple and intuitive UIs for smaller screens on mobile devices. Keep this in mind when designing various gadgets. The design must be flexible to provide the best experience across all devices and platforms for users. Collaboration with developers to determine what is feasible on smaller screens will influence the process of designing.
- Create at least 3 different versions for different browser widths. We use under 600px, 600px-900px, 900px+. Between these widths, your content will be scaled in any way you like or maintain 3 fixed layouts. The use of 3 (or greater) fixed layouts, and adding margins when needed is typically simpler to design as well as implement than using fluid scaling. But, using fluid scaling can give better performance on more devices.
Resources and tools required for Responsive website creation-
- Your browser might appear to be an obvious device to use however, it’s actually the best way to test your designs on the internet. Set up a couple of different browsers to gain a broad variety of feedback. After that, you can begin resizing the windows of the browser.
- Mobile devices are an additional tool, but it is useful to test your designs since they will show you exactly how your site’s appearance will be in these specific circumstances.
- Fluid grids are designed to create the layout of a web page based by using percentages instead of defined pixels. For example, the width of the content on a desktop display could be 930px. However, you’d like to scale the layout down to 320px when viewing on mobile. To convert this to a scalable number the result is 320/930 = 34.4 percent. If you apply this figure to the size of the screen on your mobile device, the elements of the design layout will scale according to each other. We prefer the One CSS Grid %.
- The Google resizer is an excellent resource to quickly preview your website across various devices.
- Media queries are a kind of code that will be added to your website after it’s created. It’s essential to incorporate it into your code as it creates the conditions that allow the design to magically adjust to the screen’s size. Eg. “when the screen’s size is 480 pixels or less, switch to tablet layout”. You can test it by dragging the browser’s window to make it smaller (if you’re using a desktop). The contents will automatically adjust to the various breakpoints in the design that the screens display.
I’m sure you’ve learned everything you can about responsive design. ! –
- It’s not a problem, it’s an all-encompassing design issue for all those working in the field of web design. The best way to tackle it is to stay up to date on the most recent techniques for UI/UX, design to enhance your website content and keep your images adaptable, make sure you consider navigational considerations and remember that user experience is crucial.
What are your top ideas for designing responsively? –
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