Responsive Web Design Tutorial For Beginners
In the past, the desktop was the only thing to view the website, so the developers used to create websites for a fixed size. The dimensions which were set at first didn’t need changes later no matter which screen size you choose.
The idea of a Responsive Web Design came when a tonne of devices entered into the digital world. Before this idea users have to pull in a lot of effort to navigate websites on different devices. They have to zoom and then click on the call to action button to continue working on the site. It sometimes annoys them because they have to wait long for the web pages to load.
What are Responsive Web Designs
The world is going mobile, and if the users can’t find you there, they may drop your business out from their list. RWD is an approach in which a website is optimized for any device regardless of the screen size. It is a collection of techniques to enhance the user experience on any device they choose. It makes the content readable and provides easy navigation to the website. Images become adjustable to the device, users can avail the fast loading time and can easily swipe over to view other columns.
In summary: Responsive Web Designs can adjust automatically to your device regardless of the screen size and resolution.
It has become important to make your web design responsive because people are vastly using smart devices to view web content. Also, Google withdraws websites from its first page which aren’t mobile friendly. So, if you want your site to be search engine friendly you need to focus on its responsiveness.
To make a web design responsive, you don’t need to explore Wikipedia and spend an ample time surfing on the internet. You can achieve responsiveness if you follow these basic steps. Let’s dive in!
How to make a Responsive Web Design
1) Setting Up the Viewport
The property viewport meta tag was invented by Apple when they first faced an issue in adjusting the content to the device. Later this practice was also adopted by Android devices. It helps to turn your website into a RWD by adjusting the width of the content to the width of the device. To set viewport include this meta tag in the <head>
This is how you can set the width of the content to the width of the device itself.
You can also include these options in the content section of the meta viewport.
2) Create HTML Structure
Define the structure of a website by setting page layouts with a header, content container, sidebar and a footer. You can also include navigation elements and images in HTML structure if required.
3) Define your Media Queries
Media queries and viewports are the key elements to build a responsive web design. Media queries bring powerful results, yet it is simple to implement. To make your site accessible on all devices you need to define rules and device properties in the media query. It can be inserted into a web page HTML, or you can use a separate CSS file linked to the web page.
Here’s how you can write media queries:
Simple? You can also define other dimensions sizes to make your website adjustable to all screen sizes.
The most used parameters in the media queries are:
4) Responsive Images
For a responsive web design, it is important to scale images and videos according to the screen size. The best practice is to optimize the image for the maximum size required, then set a CSS selector which target the images. Define the height and width in the media query using the {max-width:100%rule}.
5) Test your Site
When you have finalized your site, test on different devices and check if it’s working fine.
Benefits of Having a Responsive Web Design
– Your Website becomes Reachable
In the digital world today, it’s tough to keep your business running without having a mobile-friendly website. Therefore, it is important for businesses to have a website that is viewable on all devices.
– Faster Web Pages
If your website doesn’t render on all screen sizes, users will have a short attention span on your website. Using modern web techniques such as caching and responsive images can boost your website speed.
– SEO Friendly
With responsive web designs, you don’t need to focus separately on desktop and mobile websites. You can create a unified strategy focusing on a single website with good quality content that benefits your search engine ranking.
Conclusion
The exponential increase in the smart devices is making responsiveness a must thing to achieve. As the digital transformation is acquiring a big space, responsive design is the key to stay ahead of your competitors and establishing market competitiveness.
In this blog, we have mentioned a simple tutorial for beginners if they are looking to make their web design responsive. If you already have a web design we will recommend you to test its responsiveness and still if you need help to make your site 100% responsive, you can ask us anytime.
