It is impossible to keep in mind all devices, client may use for the website visiting because even some onboard computers have internet access in the modern world.
Adaptive web design and responsive web design were created to avoid the classification of the devices and eliminate the need for creating a separate site for a tablet, phones, wearable devices, TV etc.
Screen sizes are changing constantly, that’s why the possibility of website adaptation for each separate size is critical today and will stay critical in future.
Actually, ADW (adaptive web design) and RWD (responsive web design) solve the same tasks but in different ways.
The Difference Between Adaptive Web Design And Responsive Web Design
The main feature of the responsive design is that it is like a fluid and stretches depending on the screen or window size we are watching the site. The user may just stretch the window and the website will smoothly follow it.
Adaptive web design adapts to window width by mean of a leap as soon as the screen was fixed.
Modern web design suggests optimal content displaying on any screens resolutions.
The responsive design achieves this purpose by means of flexible grids used while website design creation and front-end development part. The template will automatically be rebuilt according to chosen size.
The Adaptive web design differs from the responsive because it doesn’t use the only one flexible template but suggest a few variants of site displaying. Each of them will be shown according to the screen resolution. When the user visits site the server chooses which of the chosen templates should be displayed. Among them may be versions for tablets, desktops or phones.
Now you see that responsive website designs guarantee good work on any screen size while the Adaptive design is less flexible and works well on the screens its layouts adapted to.
What to choose? Adaptive Design vs. Responsive Design
Users’ convenience is the first thing we should take into the consideration while choosing the proper design.
If the cooperation with the product which has the same structure on all devices is convenient for the users, the better decision would be the responsive design. If the users have an understanding of the technical nuances and you want to lay the ground for the future, the adaptive design is the optimal decision.
Despite the fact adaptive website design development is much complicated, its expanded opportunities and high speed of load may positively effect on website conversion and this fact is quite important in for e-commerce and media industries.
However, if we are speaking about Landing Pages and websites, working very good on mobile devices, the responsive design is a good decision here.
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all solution and each case of mobile site creation should be discussed separately.
Originally written for ossmium.com
