Definition of Responsive Website design

Web Design Galway - What's responsive web site design? Basically it's if the style of the website responds to the dimensions of the screen. Put simply, a web site built to be responsive, takes note of the height and width of the screen (actually, the viewable area is usually a browser window, such as Internet Explorer), and adjusts the site layout to suit the viewable area appropriately (in accordance with exactly what the web designer or creative director deem appropriate).

Web Design Galway - Even though this is most commonly used in web layouts, responsive web site design can go well beyond layouts. Primarily achieved using code known as media queries (see my article The Media Query), responsive web site design empowers one to produce website pages which can be independent of the viewable area.

Responsive Web Design Case Examples

A good usage instance of this would be when it comes to an internet site that's optimized to suit mobile phones as well as a desktop, wherein the hyperlinks within the top menu will be more workable repositioned being a vertical list, instead of a horizontal bar going across. This type of detail is based on responsive web site design.

If you have a grid within your layout where 10 thumbnails fit nicely across on the regular pc monitor, those thumbnails will have to be awful up-and-coming small to fit 10 across on an iPad or iPhone. With a responsive design you are able to change it out so that when the width of the system is as little as an iPad, a couple of seconds places 7 thumbnails across. Then, perhaps 4 across with an iPhone.

A lot of website contact forms are accompanied with a sidebar area (or two) for up-sale as well as other purposes. This is perfect for a computer, but over a mobile phone, automatically, the shape and also the sidebar both are shrunken down they canrrrt read. With responsive website design the form can be made to fill the screen and the sidebar may be hidden, placed underneath, "replaced" by another smaller version with similar message, most situations can be done.

Responsive Web Design vs. Liquid Layouts

For some time, there have been web site layouts that flex for the size (normally the width, specifically) from the browsers window, called liquid layouts. They are still used today, although they've never been as fashionable as the typical fixed layout you'll find of all websites (where the layout continues to be same, whatever the width of the viewable area). Liquid layouts are very widely used for cellular devices, as they possibly can be counted upon to suit every mobile display size. This sort of layout is usually kept very simple, being a grid of thumbnails or a list of button. But when one takes that same layout and lets it span the width of your desktop monitor, it is usually found to be too sparse, too stretched or it is all totally oversized.