Responsive Design: What it is ? and Why it is used?

Well! in today’s world the internet is one of the most important forms of media and the internet is mostly consumed using desktop computers right? Wait!! but what about other devices like mobile, tablets, smartphone etc. The share of internet usage on these devices is growing every day since 2011. Since then internet browsing on mobile or other devices has taken a share which would take over the traditional desktop browsing.

So, What does all this mean to you? Well, it means if you don’t want to lose any potential client then you need a great looking website, which can be optimized for mobile and other such types of devices. Because the problem is that many times website that the user experiences on the mobile devices is terrible and that’s the mission for responsive design.

Responsive Websites responds to the screen size of the devices on which you are viewing the website. So instead of creating different websites for different devices, the responsive design websites rearranges the elements to fit any screen devices or to the screen size of the devices you are viewing so, you will get more happy visitor’s which also leads to more happy customer’s.

There are few things which you must know before going on with responsive design. You should at least know about HTML and CSS so if you don’t know how to code up a website in HTML and also if you don’t know how to style your website using CSS, then you should probably know about HTML and CSS. A second most important thing that you need to know is JavaScript and a little bit of jQuery, because it is beneficial but not essential, as it will help you in adding additional functionality to your website on mobile devices.

Now let’s see Why do we need a Responsive Website?

AS discussed earlier people view websites on many different devices. So it is important to make an easy to use and easy on the eye website, no matter which device it is viewed on. Therefore it is important to make a Responsive website; meaning the design responds to the specifications of the device i.e. width and height.

So it is a job of developers to make sure that when people view your website on these devices then it should be easy to use and easy on the eye. Responsive design should not be an afterthought site, in order to your desktop website. It should be thought from the very start. In the early days when the people started to view the website on the mobile devices then they were just able to view only a static desktop website. Because the websites were already been coded for the desktop screen then a lot of time it is needed to look decent that is why it is not good to give it an afterthought. So start thinking about it from the start, so that you can plan out your content efficiently with all devices in mind.

You don’t need to think about code when trying to make it responsive. Responsive websites are very important as tons of new devices are coming out which allow users to browse websites. There are some visitor’s which may not want to view the website on mobile or any other devices but want to view it on a desktop in such cases they can give a second chance on the desktop. So it is very important for the viewers to view the website on mobile or desktop. So it is important to make your website look good on those devices.

Also now a day’s people don’t give too much time for viewing a website. If they are not able to use it properly then they may not visit your website in the future. So if you do not make your website very mobile friendly, then you will miss out on lot of viewers.

You can make a list before thinking about a responsive design, which could include various important things like taking a look at an example of a responsive site or the meta viewport tag and media queries or build a simple responsive website from scratch also take a look at responsive frameworks and grids etc.