The Beginner’s Guide to Responsive Web Design: Tips and Approaches
In a world where everyone is constantly hooked to their phones, designing a website just for a desktop is not enough. The different sizes, capabilities, and resolutions of different devices make it impossible for the same web design to work everywhere. No one wants to zoom in on a phone to read the tiny font, nor is it practical for businesses to design different websites for different devices and operating systems.
That is where responsive web design comes in.
What is Responsive Web Design?
Each device has different demands for how content is displayed. A responsive web design employs the technology required to respond to the user’s preferences in terms of screen size, platform, and orientation, and consequently modify its layout and resolution. The web content easily adapts to different window sizes.
For example, most website content is displayed in a single column. However, a desktop has the space to display the same information in two or three columns. A responsive web design automatically switches between the two formats, based on what kind of device the visitor is using.
A responsive web design is not the same as an adaptive web design. Adaptive design uses only one file through the browser to change the layout of the existing design and content. On the other hand, responsive design is based on creating completely different versions of the same content.
Instead of a program or JavaScript, a responsive web design uses CSS and HTML. While HTML is used to code the content (images and text), CSS dictates the design and layout of that content. Using these two layouts to resize, move, or hide content, based on the device being used, makes a website more responsive.
Coding Responsive Web Design
When you use a static design that does not adapt to multiple devices, it significantly limits the user experience and the website’s reach. No business can afford to lose a major demographic, which is why understanding responsive web design is critical. Responsive web design plays a vital role in getting high conversions and business growth.
We will discuss the basic approach to responsive web design next.
Set the Viewport
A viewport is the area of a webpage that the user can see. The larger the device screen, the bigger the viewport. You can include the <meta> viewport element via HTML5 to specify how the browser needs to alter the scaling and layout. This will be the first step of coding a responsive web page.
<meta name=“viewport” content=“width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0” is a sample code. The designer will set the initial width, ‘width=device-width’, and determine the starting zoom level of the webpage.
The initial widths, according to the commonly accepted Bootstrap standards, are:
- 576 pixels for portrait phones
- 768 pixels for tablets and iPads
- 992 pixels for laptops
- 1200 pixels for larger devices
Decide a Layout
Now that you know how big your canvas is going to be, the next step in creating a responsive design is placing everything where it should be. Rather than putting down a fixed width for the items involved, you can use percentages of the viewport width. This goes for all the elements of the webpage.
You can set up responsive web pages using a grid system with designated areas for a header, content bar, footer, and sidebar. You can also play around these options to suit the device. However, most responsive web designs use a 12-grid system. You need to specify the dimensions of all the columns as follows.
* {
box-sizing: border-box;
}
. main {
width: 40%
float: left
}
. main {
width: 60%
float: left;
}
You can start by changing the box-sizing property to border-box for all HTML elements. Then, you elaborate on each individual column with a viewport percentage and repeat that for all content elements. The float attribute determines the side of the screen on which that column will fall on.
Responsive web design saves time, energy, and inconvenience by using a flexible grid layout. You can modify these grids enough to change the layout according to the device. Now you only need to add in a breakpoint. For example, if the pixels fall below 992 (laptop size), the content would shift to the mobile screen if this information was pre-fed into the system.
You must take special care to ensure that the width of any element doesn’t extend over the total viewport length. This goes for both images and text. It demands the user to swipe horizontally to view the image, diminishing their overall user experience.
Use Media Queries
Media queries are the foundations of a responsive web design. It uses independent clauses as ‘if statements’, directing the website to take actions according to media query ranges (responsive breakpoints). For example, if you want the image to take up 70% of the viewport on any device over 750 pixels, this code can be used for the media query.
@media screen and (min-width: 750px) {
.full-width-img {
margin: auto;
width: 70%;
}
This code instructs the browser that whenever the pixels surpass 750, the “full-width-img” should change its size to 70% of the viewport. Specialized media queries help a web design toggle between its different formats and make a site more responsive.
Use Responsive Images
Like the layout, image sizes are also expressed as a percentage of the viewport which can be modified need-wise. When using images in responsive web design, you are required first place them in the largest size available, which can be done by the following HTML code.
img {
width: 100%;
}
Besides the width, you can easily clarify information about height if you want.
Although you can modify this 100% later to suit the device, the heavy full-sized image can be downloaded whenever. Therefore, including the HTML srcset attribute in your tags presents multiple options to download from. In addition, if you do not want the image to have the same aspect ratio on all devices, you should also specify that in the code.
Additionally, responsive images that use <picture> element and the <img> srcset and size codes can be accompanied by metadata that mentions the screen size and resolution. This gives users the option to choose which image size is best suited for their device.
If you want to see how mobile-friendly your website and its images are, Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test is a trusted resource.
Conclusion
Responsive web design is the key to attracting and keeping the attention of the target audience toward your online platforms. You can save and resources by creating a more responsive website. The process of responsive design is easy and interesting, albeit long. However, you must do all this without compromising the loading speed of your website.
While we covered the basics of responsive web design in this article, there is a lot more involved that comes with practice. Let Arturo Digital take the lead. If you are looking for help with an industry-specific website, be it responsive or not, look no further than the highly skilled, performance-oriented, and customer-dedicated team at Arturo Digital.
Call us for a free consultation or log on to our website to know more!
If you want to learn more on latest trends in website design follow Articles Bids