Responsive Web Design – Strategies To Ensure It
19 Aug 2019

“Good web design is about the character of the content, not the character of the designer”. (Jeffrey Zeldman)

Google has recommended that webmasters have to utilize the best practices of the industry to ensure responsive web design. The objective is to use the same HTML with CSS media to serve all devices for improved user experience.

Many of us might have squandered a lot of time in the development of innovative, responsive web design. First of all, what is responsive web design (RWD)? It is a systematic approach of web designers to create web pages that contribute to easy reading, impactful user interface, effective scrolling and easy navigation.

 Core Concepts of RWD

There are three extremely significant and crucial concepts of responsive web design:

1. Flexible images and media through CSS operations

2. Flexible grid-based layout

3. Media queries and media query listeners

For effective web design, the use of all three should be made mandatory.

Brief History of Responsive Web Design

Ethan Marcotte was the first one to make use of the word “Responsive Web design” in 2010. Later, he wrote a book to introduce the concept of responsiveness using a theory of adaptability by explaining the practice of RWD.

Fundamentally, the responsiveness of web design is an approach to creating platform-independent web pages using flexible layouts and graphics. Over the years, the concept has evolved considerably, giving rise to responsive design cascading style sheet (CSS) media queries.

The primary objective is to improve website accessibility over different devices, including desktops, smartphones and tablets. Mashup and Forbes declared that for a website, it is not only crucial to create a mobile-friendly website but also to emphasize the responsiveness of web design. 

Essential Strategies to Ensure Responsive Website Design

The strategies that should be kept in mind before the creation of responsive websites are listed below:

1. Progressive enhancement

Progressive enhancement comprises the use of all those strategies that makes a website visible and accessible to all. The progressive enhancement also includes the visibility of the website on all web browsers, whether they are highly advanced or poorly advanced. The progressive enhancement makes sure that the content should be precisely present in semantic markup.

2. Mobile-first

‘Mobile-first’ strategy should NOT be avoided. As smartphones are typical much these days; hence, their use and importance should not be overlooked. And websites should be developed in ways that they appear pretty optimally on variable mobile screens.

3. Unobtrusive JavaScript

Traditionally, the designing elements of the websites and functional modules were designed using integrated approaches in JavaScript. However, if the developers want to ensure the responsiveness of website design, it is essential to adopt unobtrusive JavaScript. It is the techniques used to separate the function codes or scripts from the designing scripts which help in enhancing the flexibility of the website. 

Final Thought - Strategies to Ensure Websites Responsiveness

Responsive websites, as mentioned above, are extremely pivotal for startups, continuity and enhancement of businesses. It proclaims a website with a formative layout that displays the website in a specific manner. This manner is both reasonable and long effective for both long and short-term business platforms.

“It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice.” (Steve Krug)

Contact us for responsive website development and for more counseling over this blog.

 

Learn more:

What is a website and its types

What does website maintenance include

Disadvantages of not maintaining your website

How to deal with broken links? Check this guide