Responsive Design
Responsive Design is a web developing practice used to make websites automatically adapted to different devices, without creating different versions of it. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets is making the mobile browsing a standard available to everyone and having a homepage that is automatically compatible with the smaller screens is a valuable afterthought for all potential visitors. Until recently, developers were committed to provide websites suitable for mobile phones, or for desktop browsers, but not for both at the same time, but nowadays is not enough. There are also too many differences between the models and the width of the tablet (iPad in particular) so the screens are too small or too large for achieving a proper view with all the platforms.
Fluid pages, adapted according to the screen size
It is therefore necessary to think of something more advanced, that works in all circumstances: a fluid page, which adapts itself automatically to the size of the window where is displayed. An example? Riccardo.it is a perfect example of responsive design. Try to resize the window and you immediately notice how the layout is automatically moved to make the content correctly displayed.
- This page viewed with a mobile device
Thinking beyond the desktop
Responsive web design expresses a new concept of reactive architecture: design and development automatically respond to user behavior adapting to the screen size and orientation. The practice consists of flexible mix of grids and layouts, images and clever use of CSS with media queries. In other words, the site should have the technology to automatically respond to user preferences. This would eliminate the need for a design and a development phase that is different for each new device on the market.
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