There are benefits for creating a responsive web site. Having to create multiple web sites for desktops, tablets and mobiles, you can have one URL across the board, regardless of screen size, platform or orientation. In responsive design, page elements reshuffle as the viewport grows or shrinks. A three-column desktop design may reshuffle to two columns for a tablet and a single column for a smartphone. Responsive design relies on proportion based grids to rearrange content and design elements. While responsive design emerged as a way to provide equal access to information regardless of device, it is also possible to hide certain items such as background images, secondary content or supplementary navigation on smaller screens. Decisions about hiding content and functionality or altering appearance for different device types should be based on knowledge about the users and their needs.
Although responsive design relies on shuffling elements around the page, design and development need have to work closely together to ensure a usable experience across devices. Responsive design often turns into a puzzle how to reorganize elements on larger pages to fit skinnier, longer pages or vice versa. However, ensuring that elements fit within a page is not enough. For a responsive design to be successful the design must be usable at all screen resolutions and sizes even the crappiest device that a user possesses. The changes in conventions for web design have already become apparent. This is mainly due to the adoption of ‘mobile first’ approaches to web design. Vertically scrolling is the natural action for a mobile browser, and now a lot of websites now orientate themselves around vertical scrolling, rather and side to side navigation. The popularity in ‘single scrolling’ or long continuous sites is due to their adaptability to responsive and mobile friendly design.
When the elements move around the page, the user experience can be completely different from one view of the site to the next. It is important that responsive web design DFW and development teams work together not to just determine how the content should be mixed around, but to also see what the end result of that shift looks like and how it affects the user experience. Responsive design is not the cheapest way to optimise a website for mobile devices but most business owners are appreciating this value and are more open to investing in their website design.
