Either if you want to create a page, website, or anything, you have to know about responsive web design. Not only it’s the latest design trend, but it is also important to get good business now a days.
Responsive web design is the thing that permits your page or the website to looks good on any type of device, regardless of whether it be mobile or desktop. Also, since the utilization of mobile phones is developing, having a website that is mobile-phone friendly is an important part nowadays, it attracts the user and helps to engage them more.
In this blog, we’ll learn all about responsive web design. Let’s start.
What exactly is Responsive web design?
Responsive Web Designing (RWD) is a process of designing a single website to be used and compatible on different portable or handy electronic devices.
Also known as Adaptive Web Designing (AWD).
It refers to the process of designing websites that will respond to the device they’re viewed on to provide users with a seamless, optimal user experience.
Why do we need responsive web design?
1. Growing Demand for Smartphones
2. Multiple Screen Sizes and Mobile Browsers
3. Wide Usage of the Internet
4. Permits wider browser support
5. Compulsory for Getting Good Business
Responsive Web Design Offers:
1. Smooth navigation
2. Easy reading
3. Minimum pinching.
4. Reduces scrolling and zooming.
5. Excellent user experience.
Appropriate layouts used for responsive web design:
Features of Responsive Web Design:
Now I’m going to discuss each of the stunning features one by one:
1) Adaptation to All Devices
Can you imagine your website/page working independently & adjusting itself according to screen sizes these may include rotation of screens, content visibility, images resize even the font size will change? These facilities build a positive image and enhanced the user experience. Their flexibility to adapt the screen resolution of all devices makes it more attractive.
2) Open Support for all Bowsers
Responsive Websites Designs are more compatible with all search engines which is the most important & beneficial feature of responsive websites. As we know, the greater the compatibility of a website to search engines greater its visibility.
Google recommends mobile-optimized sites for intended mobile users.
3) Perfection in your SEO
The websites/pages with a responsive design are usually not compatible with mobile phones and all other devices. For such devices, the companies have to build ‘mobile sites’. These things double the work of developers and create a challenge for SEO persons to optimize the links of both mobile & desktop sites.
Responsive designs of the website give easier for SEO’s persons to work only once & limited the burden of work.
4) Low Cost & Higher Maintenance
Instead of creating different versions of a single site that will be compatible with desktop, laptop, iPods, and mobile phones you just need to develop a single site with responsive characteristics. This will eventually minimize the cost factor and give ease of maintenance.
5) Better performance
Responsive websites provide better performance and a user-friendly experience.
What we need to create a Responsive Design?
There are several main technical aspects of responsive web design:
1. Flexbox
2. Grid Layout
3. Media Queries
4. Viewport
5. Responsive Images/Videos
Let’s go through one by one of each feature:
1. Flexbox:
Flexbox model provides for an efficient way to layout, align, and distribute space among elements within your document — even when the viewport and the size of your elements are dynamic or unknown.
This defines a flex container; inline or block depending on the given value. It enables a flex context for all its direct children.
In HTML, we write it as:
<div class=”container”>
<div class=”items”>1</div>
<div class=”items”>2</div>
<div class=”items”>3</div>
</div>
In CSS, we write it as:
.container {
display: flex;
}
2. Grid Layout:
CSS Grid Layout excels at dividing a page into major regions or defining the relationship in terms of size, position, and layer, between parts of a control built from HTML primitives.
The lines between columns are called column lines.
The lines between rows are called row lines.
If you want to learn more about flexbox and grid, you can refer here.
3. Media Queries:
Now, most importantly Media queries are a way to target browsers by certain characteristics, features, and user preferences, then apply styles or run other code based on those things. Perhaps the most common media queries in the world are those that target particular viewport ranges and apply custom styles, which birthed the whole idea of responsive design.
In CSS, we add these types of media queries:
@media screen and (min-width: 1024px) {
body {
background-color: blue;
}
}
@media screen and (max-width: 480px) {
body {
background-color: purple;
}
}
4. Viewport:
- The viewport is the user’s visible area of a web page.
- The viewport varies with the device, and will be smaller on a mobile phone than on a computer screen.
Setting The Viewport:
It should include the following <meta> viewport element in all your web pages:
In HTML head tag, we add this line<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0″>
The width=device-width part sets the width of the page to follow the screen-width of the device (which will vary depending on the device).
The initial-scale=1.0 part sets the initial zoom level when the page is first loaded by the browser.
Let’s see an example of the viewport:
5. Responsive Images/ Video
(i) Responsive Images:
If you want the image to scale both up and down on responsiveness, set the CSS width property to 100% and height to auto. In CSS we write for it as:
.img {
width: 100%;
height: auto;
}
(ii) Responsive Videos:
If the width property is set to 100%, as a result, the video player will be responsive and scale up and down. In CSS we’ll for it is:
.video {
width: 100%;
height: auto;
}Additionally, for browser support i.e., for Chrome, Mozilla, Safari, we use the syntax like this:
- Firefox Browser Support Syntax:
Mozilla uses -moz-
- Chrome Browser Support Syntax:
Chrome/Opera/Safari use -webkit-
Let’s understand them by following examples:
We write in CSS as:
background-image: -moz-linear-gradient(left,green,yellow);
background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear,left center,right center,from(green),to(yellow));To sum up, that’s all is the basic features we need to make a page/website responsive.
To understand more, you check this github for the simple example of responsive web design:
https://github.com/alkavats1/responsive-web-design-example
Conclusion:
In this blog, we’ve learned about responsive web design, how it helps nowadays to the users, various types of layouts for responsive designs, its basic features, and the important technical aspects of responsive web design. Basically, flex, grid, and media queries are three important ingredients for responsive web designs. Because of responsive web design, we can load our website/page on different devices varying the screen sizes more comfortably and easily.
