What You Need To Focus On In Responsive Design

Responsive is the mantra that’s on everybody’s lips. But to make a website responsive you need to identify which content is going to take precedence and which aspect of your website should be accorded priority. We take a look at what are the issues to be looked after when you want to make a website responsive.

-> Responsive websites need to be prioritized carefully as visitors may have limited time and visual space due to the device they’re using or their environment.

-> Extensive User Research: Researching the audience helps to find out how they view the website. Here you need to find out:

-> How visitors use your website, including how much time they spend on it, how they read and view the content, how far away they are from the screen, and so on.

-> What sorts of devices they use most often to view the website, and which devices they may use in the near future.

-> Where they would view your website.

Different Layouts For Different Devices: Usually, you’ll want to provide the most information or website content for the size/resolution of the device that the visitor is using; keep in mind the viewing distance on large devices like TVs however. Grid-based layouts simplify this task by providing different numbers of columns for blocks of content depending on the device. For example, a website may use 5 columns for its layout on large devices, 3 columns on tablets, and 1 column on a regular phone.

Automatic Adjusting Of The Layout For The Different Devices: A combination of CSS and JavaScript can be used to detect the device that the website is being used on, and it’s specifications (such as if it supports the Flash or the latest version of HTML), and adjust the website accordingly. CSS Media Queries are particularly useful for determining the resolution of the device.

Ensuring That That Media Is Appropriately Sized: Responsive websites typically try to display smaller images and videos for mobile devices like phones because phone screens are typically smaller than computer or TV screens, and because phone are often used with limited-bandwidth data contracts. This has become less of a problem, however, as smartphones have increasingly higher-resolution screens. In addition, modern browsers often use pre-fetching that makes it difficult to send a particular-sized image to the device.