These days having a website is not enough, in fact, every business owner or client wants to have a responsive website. Practically it has become essential to be available on all platforms, including Blackberry, iPad, iPhone, Kindle or notebook. May be in the next five years a number of additional web designs and web technologies may emerge.
Responsive web design is a solution of the multi screen compatibility problem. You cannot stick to desktop and mobile, when a number of gadgets can be used to access the website. Here are a few Layout tips for optimization of responsive website:
1) Adaptive or Responsive Design
The two approaches are used for the same purpose. Both have their own benefits and suitable for one or another case. So there is no standard in which you should design a responsive website. Let your content decide about the Layout, whether it should be Adaptive or Responsive.
2) Flow
As the screen size changes, the flow of content also changes because the website occupies more vertical space, by pushing down anything below the content, it is called the flow. It might be somewhat tricky, if you are using points and pixels to design the website, but will become clear when you will get used to it.
3) Relative Units
Units play an important role, while designing a web page. As the canvas can be a mobile screen or desktop, so the pixel density will vary and in such case relative units like percents work better. For example, 50% wide will mean that it will occupy only half of the size of present screen or viewport.
4) Use of Breakpoints
Web page layout may be changed due to breakpoints at a predefined point, like a web page may have three columns for its desktop page, while only one column with its mobile version. Many other CSS properties adjust as well if the breakpoints are there on the web page. As it can affect the layout of full web page, so be cautious while using breakpoints as improper use of them may make your webpage messy.
5) Max and Min Values
For some devices the content may take the whole width of your device, but for a few devices like TV, it may not look good if the content will stretch to the whole width of your TV screen. Here is the point, where the Min and Max values can help you e.g. you can set the width of 100% and Max width of 1000px, which will mean that the content will only stretch itself up to 1000px.
6) Relative Position of the Nested Objects:
Managing a lot of elements, which depend on each other, may be difficult. You can wrap and keep the elements in a container to make such a clumsy task easier and give your page a tidy and well organized look. For the elements like the logo or buttons you can use a static unit like a pixel.
7) First Desktop or Mobile
Technically, you can choose any, either mobile or desktop to start designing and go from a smaller screen to a bigger. But a firm decision about this can be proven helpful in making your further decisions. Often people start designing for both at once. So just check what suits you and choose accordingly.
8) Which Font- System or Web?
You may want to have cool looking and stunning fonts for your website. Web fonts are downloaded and each time your web page may take longer time, if web fonts are used on it. On the other hand system fonts are lighter and faster, only if the user do not have them locally, then in that case it will fall back to a default one.
9) Vector vs Bitmap Images
If the icon, used in your web page has fancy effects and lot of details, then go for Bitmap images otherwise you can use vector images. If you have considered bitmap images, then use gif, jpg or png and for vector images SVG or icon font can be a better choice. You can choose any, but do not go online if your image is not optimized. Some older browser versions do not support Vector images and a vector image with lots of curves might be heavier and take longer time to load, so choose wisely.
Responsive sites can suffer the speed, if they will not be optimized properly. Special attention must be given to the design hierarchy.
For responsive web design it is not sufficient just to ensure that the elements are fitting within the web page, instead for a successful responsive web design, the design must be suitable and fit to all screen sizes and resolutions.
Responsive web design is a solution of the multi screen compatibility problem. You cannot stick to desktop and mobile, when a number of gadgets can be used to access the website. Here are a few Layout tips for optimization of responsive website:
1) Adaptive or Responsive Design
The two approaches are used for the same purpose. Both have their own benefits and suitable for one or another case. So there is no standard in which you should design a responsive website. Let your content decide about the Layout, whether it should be Adaptive or Responsive.
2) Flow
As the screen size changes, the flow of content also changes because the website occupies more vertical space, by pushing down anything below the content, it is called the flow. It might be somewhat tricky, if you are using points and pixels to design the website, but will become clear when you will get used to it.
3) Relative Units
Units play an important role, while designing a web page. As the canvas can be a mobile screen or desktop, so the pixel density will vary and in such case relative units like percents work better. For example, 50% wide will mean that it will occupy only half of the size of present screen or viewport.
4) Use of Breakpoints
Web page layout may be changed due to breakpoints at a predefined point, like a web page may have three columns for its desktop page, while only one column with its mobile version. Many other CSS properties adjust as well if the breakpoints are there on the web page. As it can affect the layout of full web page, so be cautious while using breakpoints as improper use of them may make your webpage messy.
5) Max and Min Values
For some devices the content may take the whole width of your device, but for a few devices like TV, it may not look good if the content will stretch to the whole width of your TV screen. Here is the point, where the Min and Max values can help you e.g. you can set the width of 100% and Max width of 1000px, which will mean that the content will only stretch itself up to 1000px.
6) Relative Position of the Nested Objects:
Managing a lot of elements, which depend on each other, may be difficult. You can wrap and keep the elements in a container to make such a clumsy task easier and give your page a tidy and well organized look. For the elements like the logo or buttons you can use a static unit like a pixel.
7) First Desktop or Mobile
Technically, you can choose any, either mobile or desktop to start designing and go from a smaller screen to a bigger. But a firm decision about this can be proven helpful in making your further decisions. Often people start designing for both at once. So just check what suits you and choose accordingly.
8) Which Font- System or Web?
You may want to have cool looking and stunning fonts for your website. Web fonts are downloaded and each time your web page may take longer time, if web fonts are used on it. On the other hand system fonts are lighter and faster, only if the user do not have them locally, then in that case it will fall back to a default one.
9) Vector vs Bitmap Images
If the icon, used in your web page has fancy effects and lot of details, then go for Bitmap images otherwise you can use vector images. If you have considered bitmap images, then use gif, jpg or png and for vector images SVG or icon font can be a better choice. You can choose any, but do not go online if your image is not optimized. Some older browser versions do not support Vector images and a vector image with lots of curves might be heavier and take longer time to load, so choose wisely.
Responsive sites can suffer the speed, if they will not be optimized properly. Special attention must be given to the design hierarchy.
For responsive web design it is not sufficient just to ensure that the elements are fitting within the web page, instead for a successful responsive web design, the design must be suitable and fit to all screen sizes and resolutions.