Why the need for responsive web design?

RWD or responsive web design is currently one of today’s most popular and effective approach to website design particularly when it comes to making the site adapt properly on different displays. However, the term can be fairly unfamiliar to many and most people tend to misunderstand the concept. In order to better grasp the idea of responsive website design, it is often best to step back and see the bigger picture.

Now why is there a need for RWD in the first place? Well think about this for a minute – as mobile devices became more widespread, the difference between these devices and full-pledged computer systems had become increasingly obscure. Internet connectivity among these devices had now become fairly standard and are now capable of browsing and viewing web pages. Herein lies the problem – websites that were originally designed to be viewed on PCs were often unreadable on mobile devices. Prior to CSS3 or HTML5, website owners had long made attempts to adapt their sites in order to be viewable on little hand held devices but often met zero or very little success – today’s responsive web design technology is dramatically changing all that!

As the need for websites to adapt on mobile devices became more and more prevalent, many went as far as creating additional pages that duplicate their original website just so they could get a share of the growing market for users of portable devices. Such measures often didn’t go so well and breed many problems often the most significant of which are missing features which makes the idea of creating a separate website especially for mobile devices a poor workaround. More so if you are “dumbing down” a complex website in the hopes of making it viewable on mobile displays.

Now ask yourself – wouldn’t it be better if you can create a website that features an effective way of adapting itself to the display of any device used to access it? Well that’s exactly what responsive website design enables you to do! With the use of some of the latest technology in web design such as HTL5, CSS and augmented media queries, a website can be designed for optimal display on the screen of any devices from desktop and laptop computers to mobile devices like tablets and smart phones. The question remains though – how does everything actually come together?

Responsive Web Design – How does it work and benefit you?

How does responsive web design actually work? Several of today’s technology in web design makes it all possible:

Media Query backed by a good proportion based grip can enable a website to “ask” the devices trying to access information about its display specifications (display dimensions, type and resolution)

CSS3 and HTML 5 enable the website to adapt and display correctly based on the information gathered via media query. Any shift from multiple columns to one or two columns can be done smoothly and fluidly using display configurations suited to the specifications of any internet capable device.

Indeed the essential benefit that one could gain from responsive web design is that it makes your website a lot more adaptive and versatile as it CSS overrides the initial layout of your website and adapt it to any screen size. Now it may seem like a simple explanation to responsive web design but it’s exactly what RWD does – attending to the design process once and making perfectly viewable across all range of internet capable devices while making their site useful and accessible to its users.