Responsive Web Design: Creating Mobile-Friendly Websites
- Web Designing
Umair Butt
- 0
- 7 minutes read
The world has been changed to a mobile-centric world, so in this world where people are using different kind of devices including mobiles, tablets and desktops. You will have to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly, this is not only a good practice for the web developers even it is now a mandatory task. Responsive web design is the part of developing websites that are designed accordingly to different sizes of devices and screen. Today in this article, we will discuss about the importance of responsive web design and we will try to provide professional practical tips to help you designing mobile-friendly and responsive websites.
The Rise of Mobile Devices
People are browsing the websites using different devices and mostly from smartphones and tablets. Even if we talk about the primary source of browsing, no doubt it is mobile device. Now approximately every person has mobile phone device, some people are using android devices and few are using iPhone devices. So the website should look and function optimally on all screens of sizes, and responsive web design actually addresses this requirement.
What is Responsive Web Design?
A few years ago developers were creating and building separate websites or apps for different devices. But now designers and developers use fluid grids, flexible layouts and CSS media queries to adjust the behavior and appearance of the website. There responsive web design is a great approach to the web development that emphasizes the designing of websites and web pages that adapt to various orientations and screen sizes.
Why Responsive Design Matters
1.) Improved User Experience:
Responsive websites delivers a comprehensive, professional and user-friendly experience across the all devices, which increase the user engagement and satisfaction.
2.) Better SEO:
People are using different search engines from all over the world and Google is the most famous search engine. Google also give good ranking to those websites that are mobile-friendly. The effort of your website search engine optimization could impact by a professional responsive design.
3.) Cost-Efficiency:
If you maintain a single responsive website layout for different devices, it’s better than managing more than one versions for various devices.
4.) Increased Accessibility
If you are using mobile-friendly design then you content will be accessible to a large audience including the disable people who may use latest technologies on tablet and mobile devices.
Practical Tips for Creating Mobile-Friendly Websites
1. Start with a Mobile-First Approach
Start the process of design by making a layout for mobile and progressively and professionally enhance it for the big screens. This step will make sure that the functionality and core content are optimized for the users of mobile devices.
2. Use Fluid Grids and Flexible Layouts
You should develop your website using related units like percentages instead of fixed units for instance pixels. This will allow the elements to change the size proportionally according to the size of the screen.
.container {
width: 100%;
max-width: 1200px;
margin: 0 auto;
}
The maximum width property value is 1200px which will set a maximum width for large screens and the margin 0 with auto will the container in center.
3. Implement CSS Media Queries
You can apply specific and unique styles according to the device’s characteristics using media queries such as the width of the screen. Make responsive breakpoints for various sizes of screen using them.
@media screen and (min-width: 768px) {
}
Above are the styles for screens wider than 768px.
4. Optimize Images and Media
Large files of images and media can slow down the speed of your website on mobile and tablet devices. Compress them use responsive images and consider slow loading to improve the loading times.
<img src=”image.jpg” alt=”Responsive Image” srcset=“image.jpg 800w, image-small.jpg 400w” sizes=“(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 50vw”>
5. Test Across Devices
You should test and check your websites on different browsers and devices regularly to make sure the functions are okay and the look is perfect. You can use different device lags, browser developer tools, and emulators for testing purposes.
6. Prioritize Content
Prioritize the functionality and essential content on the small devices and screens. Change the menu navigation to a mobile-friendly menu icon (hamburger menu) and also use the accordions to hide the less critical information.
7. Keep Touchscreens in Mind
Make sure to design and prepare the elements that are easy to interact with and tap on touchscreen devices. Also, make sure there is a proper space between links and buttons to prevent accidental taps.
