Over the past 10 years or so, there has been a huge advancement in technology and things are becoming outdated faster than ever. This being said, it is important to have a website design that can keep up with the times and be functional in different settings. One way that companies are doing this is by using a design technique called responsive web design. Responsive web design (RWD) aims to make a website that is compatible with different platforms without having to make altered versions of the site itself. So this means that a website will have different characteristics on a cell phone versus on a computer screen. The content will be the same on both sites but it will be easier to manage based on what platform it is on.
In the past web designers would’ve had to have made different versions of sites for each platform. So there would be a computer version of the site, a mobile version of the site, and so on; but that process was tedious and inefficient. Plus now there are so many different types of each platform and they have different specifics such as screen size and resolution, so the website would not have looked good on each one. RWD includes the entire content on a website including the pictures. The resolution and size of the picture will be altered based on the platform that it is being viewed on. So a picture that takes up most of the screen on a computer will be shrunk down and altered to fit on a smart phone. Instead of having the page sizing details to be in absolute units, RWD has features sized in percentages so it can change from one platform to another.
Responsive web design was a big technological step forward and if companies aren’t using it by now, then they need to change that quickly. A majority of web viewing is done on smartphones or other handheld devices now because of how convenient it is. It may not seem like a big deal having to design multiple versions of a website, but as new platforms are introduced it will be difficult to sustain that type of website development. Once a website is set up using RWD, the company will have more time to focus on other things and become a more efficient company.
