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DESIGN NEWS
Responsive
Web Design
The Ultimate Guide
PUBLISHED APRIL 12, 2021 - CANINE CORRESPONDENCE
We all know that the internet is increasingly accessible as technological advances day by day.. Responsive Web design is no longer a luxury but a necessity for your business and your online brand awareness and success.
You have probably heard terms like responsive web design, mobile-friendly website, adaptive layout, etc. These are the methods and ways of dealing with the change of appearance on different devices. These methods are based on the user browser dimensions and width.
In this guide, we will provide you all that you should know about responsive website design. In this guide we have also included definitions, a step-by-step walkthrough and examples, so that you can use it as a reference guide for an all “know how”.
What is a Responsive Web Design?
A responsive web design is all about the way of suggesting that the design and development should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on its screen dimensions; size, platform, and orientation.
The best example of this is your content. Your website content might be separated into different columns on the screens of user screen because they are wide enough to accommodate that design. And if you separate your content into multiple columns on a mobile device, it will be hard for users to read it and interact with it. This will affect your SEO and your website score.
This is where responsive design comes into the scene. Responsive design makes it possible to deliver multiple and separate layouts of your content and your design. But this will depend on the screen size of each unique user.
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The Building Blocks of Responsive Design
Responsive Website Design is a way to create a flexible website for various devices that people are using these days for browsing websites. In this part, we will cover the underlying foundation for responsive website design and all of its different building blocks.
1. CSS and HTML
The combination of these two languages serves as the best foundation for responsive website design. These languages control the content and layout of a page in any given web browser. HTML or HyperText Markup Language dictates the content and structure of the webpage. On the other hand, CSS or Cascading Style Sheets modifies the design and displays the HTML elements.
2. Media Queries
A media query or queries is part of a CSS technique introduced in CSS3, and it uses the @media rule to include a block of CSS properties but only if a particular condition is correct. It also lets you render content to adapt to different factors or dimensions like screen size or resolution.
3. Responsive Images
A responsive image is a concept where photos work well on different devices with widely differing screen resolutions, sizes, and other features. It will also help to improve performance across different devices.
4. Speed
Keep in mind that the top priority of creating a responsive design for your website is the loading speed. Your way of dealing with responsiveness must not delay your page’s first render any more than it needs to. You can make your pages faster by optimising your images, implementing caching, using CSS layout, minification, improving critical rendering path, and avoiding render-blocking JS.
Common Responsive Breakpoints
A breakpoint is the screen width where it lets you work with media queries, and this will let you use it to implement it in new CSS styles. Here are the common screen sizes:
Mobile
360 x 640
375 x 667
360 x 720
iPhone X
375 x 812
Pixel 2
411 x 731
Tablet
768 x 1024
Laptop
1366 x 768
High-res laptop or desktop
1920 x 1080
Choosing a mobile-first approach to design will not require you to include mobile breakpoints if you have a single column and smaller font as the basis unless you want to optimize the design for specific models.
How to Implement a Responsive Website Design
1. Adopt Fluid Grid
Websites in the past were laid out based on pixels, but now, designers have shifted to using a fluid grid. Grid sizes the element of your site proportionally. It will make it easy for you to size different things on different screens. This responsive grid is often divided into columns, and usually, the heights and widths are scaled.
3. Think about images
Sizing images can be one of the most challenging aspects of responsive web design. You will need to set dimensions in your CSS that will determine how your images are handled on different devices or screens.
2. Allow for touchscreens
Laptops these days are usually touchscreens, and it makes an essential for responsive websites to be designed with both mouse and touchscreen users in mind.
4. Pre-designed Theme
You can try a pre-designed theme or layout if you have no time or desire to design a responsive website yourself. That will leave you to worry about doing the colours, branding, and content that will match your company.
Conclusion
We may find a lot of different elements that go into responsive web design but without a basic understanding of HTML and CSS, it will give you chances of making mistakes. This can be avoided through proper learning and familiarizing yourself with the different building blocks, analyzing examples of web dev tools, testing sample codes, and this will allow you to make your website responsive without any major issues.
