5 Important Points on Choosing Between Responsive Web Design and Adaptive Web Design | Proweaver, Inc.
How your website displays on a laptop, tablet, smartphone, or PC is dependent on its design. In the past, a web designer can choose to have a fixed design for the site. At times, the website may be better off having a fluid layout. Now though, for most contemporary web designers, they only have two options to choose from. They either design the site with an adaptive layout or a responsive one. These two are the most dynamic types of design that match with the demands in today’s world.
In the past, websites were only designed to be accessible via laptop or desktop computers. It is because of this that designers from the past only choose between fixed or fluid designs.
Over time though, newer versions of smartphones were programmed to have access to the Internet. This allows users to visit websites using their smart gadgets. For visitors, this is a happy thing. They can now access the information they want without having to turn on their laptop. For web designers though, this means that they have to up the ante. They now have to find ways to design the website so that visitors can view it in a smaller screen.
Know the Different Types of Web Designs

Webmasters now have to face a tough challenge. How can they create a site that can scale according to the screen size of the device the site is being accessed from?
Let’s start first with familiarizing ourselves with the old layouts: fixed and fluid. Fixed designs, as its name implies, have a fixed width. This means that it will follow the same measurements regardless of the screen size. On the other hand, the fluid design uses percentage for measurement. The fluid design is better than the fixed one since it can still be scalable. The page content will shrink or enlarge depending on the size of the screen. The matter of whether it is usable or not is still questionable though.
Now, let’s move on to responsive and adaptive custom web design. These are the two designs created to meet the needs of modern web designers: to scale a website’s layout into a usable format without minding the screen size.
For designers who want to adapt a website to specific devices, they can use adaptive web design. This particular design can detect screen sizes and then load a layout appropriate for that device. As for responsive designs, they can adapt to any device orientation, device, and user behavior. To make this possible, responsive designs take advantage of CSS media queries.
Now, most smart devices are Internet-enabled. Thus, many designers opt to have either the responsive or adaptive website designs. This way, users can still view the website regardless of what smart device they use to access it.
What’s The Difference: Responsive vs. Adaptive
Responsive and adaptive designs are more advantageous to use now compared to fixed and fluid layouts. With responsive and adaptive designs, there is better user experience offered.
Both responsive and adaptive designs are created for the same purpose. But, of course, they still have differences. These differences allow designers to choose which one is the most suitable to use for a project.
The biggest difference between the two designs is in the ability to adapt to a user’s screen. For responsive designs, the web pages change to adapt to the user’s screen. For the adaptive design, it requires creating different web pages for different devices.
Responsive Design: Resizing the Web Pages
When a user opens a site on a browser, information on the device’s screen size is passed to the website. The website will then adjust the site frame according to that detail.
Together with the adjustments, web designers have to mind the formatting too. The content’s formatting should not degrade user experience. As a solution, responsive designs use content breaks, otherwise known as breakpoints. These breakpoints allow the site to scale images, adjust layouts, wrap texts, and so on to fit the screen.
Adaptive Design: Design a Site That Fits the Device
If you want to control how the site displays on specific devices, then that’s adaptive design for you. Adaptive designs deliver different experiences for users using PC from those using smartphones.
Let’s set an example here.
Say you have an e-commerce site. You want visitors to see an item gallery under different categories as they access your site on their PC. If they are on a smartphone though, you want them to see the categories first with the flash deals below. An adaptive site is the most suitable design solution for this.
Designers can work on different screen widths to maximize the use of this design. They will first check their analytics, though. This way, they can decide which screen widths to focus on.
There is already a clear distinction between responsive and adaptive designs. But, there are still cases when you are unsure of which one to use for your custom web design. Good thing there are factors you can consider when choosing between the two.
Important Factors in Choosing Between Responsive and Adaptive Web Design
Nowadays, the most popular choice for webmasters is the responsive web design. But, there are still many webmasters who consider adaptive web designs a favorite. The two sides would oftentimes fight which of the two options is better. But, which of the two is truly the more preferable choice? The answer lies in the purpose of the website you plan to make as well as the needs of the designer.
Wrapping It Up
Adaptive designs load quicker than responsive designs. It sends less data to the browser when delivering content, after all.
Proweaver designs websites to match your needs and business nature. We make use of the best options that show your company in the best light possible. If you need help with designing a website for your company, you only need to give us a call and we will lend you a hand.
Do you have your own thoughts about adaptive and responsive web design? Be sure to share it with us! Let’s discuss.
Originally published at https://www.proweaver.com on November 8, 2019.