Overview
Responsive web design is a design and development approach that creates a website or application interface that responds to the size of a user's screen. With responsive design, web pages adjust seamlessly to look good on all devices - from large desktop monitors to small mobile phone screens. It primarily uses flexible layouts, flexible images, and CSS media queries.
Why it's important
Internet usage is no longer tied to desktop computers and is increasingly dominated by smartphones and tablets, responsive design has become critical. It provides optimal viewing and interaction experience, making it easy for users to read and navigate with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling. This user-friendly nature of responsive web design enhances user experience.
How it works
Responsive web design works through CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), specifically using media queries and flexible layouts. These media queries test for a certain condition and apply different styles and layouts depending on the result. For example, a media query can have a condition that tests for devices with a viewport width larger than 1200 pixels, and if the device passes the condition, a different layout is applied to fit the larger screen.
The flexible layout aspect of responsive design involves designing the layout of a website so that it can dynamically adjust to the width of the browser window. This is often done using percentages and relative units rather than fixed units, such as pixels.
The 12-column grid system
The 12-column grid system is a popular method for creating responsive layouts. It's based on dividing the layout of a webpage into 12 separate columns, which can be combined in various ways to create different layouts. Each element in the layout is given a certain number of columns. For example, three equal-width columns would each span four of the grid's columns.
On smaller screens, the grid can be adjusted so that the columns stack vertically instead of horizontally. This is typically done using media queries. This flexibility allows the layout to adjust seamlessly to different screen sizes, maintaining a clean and organized layout no matter what device the website is viewed on.