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About a decade ago, desktop and laptop computers were the only means of accessing the internet. They afforded users a large screen to view sites making it easier for them to savour the beauty of a great website.
Today, the story has changed. More than half of surfers these days access the internet through mobile devices like tablets, mobile phones and what have you. This change has necessitated building responsive websites.
What is a responsive website?
A responsive website is a website that can detect the type of device used by a visitor, whether laptop, smartphone or a tablet. The site then adjusts its layout automatically to fit in with the screen of the device
without losing its beauty and accessibility. This is necessary as we all know that the screen of a mobile device is definitely smaller than that of a personal computer. If the image shown on a personal computer is to be displayed exactly on a tablet, there will be problem. Being responsive will make the website adjust to the accessing device. How?
without losing its beauty and accessibility. This is necessary as we all know that the screen of a mobile device is definitely smaller than that of a personal computer. If the image shown on a personal computer is to be displayed exactly on a tablet, there will be problem. Being responsive will make the website adjust to the accessing device. How?
To adjust to a smaller screen, a responsive website will re-arrange its menu bar and other content so as to fit the size of the screen so that the content can be accessed by tapping on the menu bar.
But, how can a designer make his designs responsive? Follow the following useful tips on how to create a responsive website.
1. Plan: Planning should always be the priority of a web designer. During this stage, you consider all the factors than necessitate building a responsive website and adjust your style of design to accommodate all these factors. You also think of what tools to use to achieve what you have planned. Although it takes time to plan, but the time will be recovered when your design is implemented within a very short period of time compared to beating about the bush during the design stage.
2. Choose the right tools: There are so many web design tools around now. It is very important that you find out time to explore the different options that you have so as to make the right choice.Some of these tools include softwares that are designed for creating responsive websites even if you don't know the full meaning of HTML not to talk of differentiating between PHP tags and HTML tags.DudaOne and Squarespace are two of the softwares that are designed to help builders build websites that are truly responsive. You can look up these softwares and others so as to make your choice.
3. Use navigation bar wisely: If you put too much navigation bars in your design, this may affect how the site is displayed on a small screen. While trying to adjust the layout to accommodate these bars, there will be a conflict between displaying all the bars and making other content available on the screen. If you must use multiple navigation bars, why don't you consider putting everything in an icon that will display a drop-down menu when tapped? This will simplify your design and help you to focus more on the other aspects of the design.
4. Consider the mobile devices first: It is advisable for designers to consider building a site that focuses on mobile devices and other small screens first. If your design is good on these small screens, definitely it will be great on larger screens. It may be done the other way round but why take the longer route when there is a shorter route?
5. Design the layout first: After deciding to consider the smaller screen first, the next thing is to design the layout before thinking of coding. This affords you the opportunity of getting your clients satisfaction and approval before proceeding to the next stage of coding. During the layout design, make the button large enough to be visible on a mobile device. No matter what you are doing, always remember to keep the design simple and functional to a fault.
5. Design the layout first: After deciding to consider the smaller screen first, the next thing is to design the layout before thinking of coding. This affords you the opportunity of getting your clients satisfaction and approval before proceeding to the next stage of coding. During the layout design, make the button large enough to be visible on a mobile device. No matter what you are doing, always remember to keep the design simple and functional to a fault.
6. Make use of the right images: Images play a very important role in the layout of a site. There may be logos and other important images to display. For each layout, make sure that the images that are used are optimized. How? The rule of thumb is that you should not use png images as these may affect the display of the site. Rather, use png-8, gif and jpeg formats. This will make bandwidth and necessary scaling to be done effortlessly and without affecting the display of the site.Another point here is to be precise with the measurement of your image. You also need to specify the dimensions of your image so as to reduce the effect of scaling. Otherwise, you may jeopardize the quality of your image and design as well as affect the resolution negatively.
7. Do away with contents that are not important: There are some elements that will not work very fine in mobile devices and may be present in the layout. Look out for these elements and disable them from the mobile option or get rid of them completely.
8. Compress elements and contents: To make your site load faster, it is necessary that your compress some elements and contents. You can do this by making use of GZIP. This will reduce the size of the site and the goal of building a responsive website that loads faster will be achieved.
9. Make it simple: Simplicity in this regard demands that you use simple HTML for the coding while you handle all other things like menus and navigation bars in such a way to make them easy to access. To get the best of this, HTML 5 is recommended as it has what it takes for responsive designs. In fact, HTML 5 was designed out of the need for responsive websites. If you add too much elements that are not necessary like unreasonable absolute positioning and complex javascript codes, your objective of a responsive design may be defeated.
10. Don't forget the objective: Always remember that you want to create a site that will load well irrespective of low resolution and small screen size. At times, the bandwidth access may be very weak. Therefore, when you have these points at the back of your mind, you will always achieve the goal. Remember, simplicity is the rule of thumb. Follow all the tips above and you will have a design that is responsive as well as is fast to load. To compromise the objective for any reason.
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