Greenlite SEM: Responsive Design
Welcome to the Greenlite Learning Center
Responsive website design is an approach that focuses on sites designed to adjust, react and respond to user based variables. Variables such as screen size, platform and orientation. This design belief considers a users environment, and/or behavior to create a website that dynamically reacts to these variables to better the end-user experience. That said, a mobile responsive site actually adjusts layouts, columns and other design structures to accommodate for different device perimeters. For example, when a user switches from their laptop to an iPad, the website should automatically adjust for screen size, resolution and even image size. In other words respond to a users preferences. Without responsive design, a developer would have to create different versions of the site for every resolution and device on the market. Highly impractical and time consuming. Responsive design eliminates this unnecessary need, allowing for seamless transitions from device to device. With technology moving faster and faster, creating responsive websites has gotten a lot easier for the DIY web designer and experienced developers the same.
Building a Responsive Website
Building a responsive website has become much easier to do with the many advancements website design technology. Along with the leaps and bounds being made as far as resolution and mobile device capabilities, responsive design has also become a necessity. Here a some tips and practices when entering the ever changing world of mobile responsive website design.
- When building a responsive website, build a non-responsive site first. This way you handle the function and design issues ahead of time, allowing you to focus on creating adaptive properties to a site you already like aesthetically.
- Add media queries to your layout: Media queries are useful when you want to modify your site or app depending on a device's general type (such as print vs. screen) or specific characteristics and parameters (such as screen resolution or browser viewport width). Media queries are sometimes difficult to define, but it's recommended you set maximum and minimum parameters to adjust for tablet and mobile screens. This will take some understanding of CSS and HTML code and you may need to contact a developer. Good thing for you the development team at Greenlite SEM has you covered!
- Set parent code for onsite media such as images and video. This will ensure images won't get bigger than their parent container.
- Next, be sure to employ a responsive font. Many times typography is overlooked but to truly have a responsive website, your font needs to adjust to different screen sizes as well.
As stated above, designing a responsive website does take some basic coding knowledge and the Greenlite team is highly capable. However, if you would like to give it a try on your own, there are plenty of tools to help facilitate the process. W3Schools is a excellent platform to learn coding at your own pace. Remember, responsive design focuses on making your website look great on any and every device on the market. If you need a site today or just want to pass on learning how to code in a crunch, contact the Greenlite Design Team today and let us build a mobile responsive website for you or your business.
