Technical aspects of Responsive Design

This post continues my previous article — Thoughts on Efficient Test Design #2.

There are three critical principles for responsive design:

• Fluid Grid System: each element would occupy the same space on a percentage basis. The screen can become small or large when users view these designs on different devices. You can choose the placement of your pixels along with a layout size so that the elements can be scaled and fixed in any direction. It is easy to use a CSS grid layout system and generator for the base of your design.

You also need to calculate your target size by dividing it as a percentage by the context. This is the maximum width of the design feature when you divide it by the entire width of the user’s browser. By applying these percentages to the required properties in your CSS script, you can use a single design that shrinks or expands depending on the user’s screen size.

• Fluent use of images: Unlike text, images are usually not fluid. This means they have the same configuration and size from one device to another by default. Their design can appear inconsistent on different devices because images can never be customized, and this can cause them to appear disproportionate concerning other elements. Therefore, it is necessary to apply this CSS command:

img {max-width: 100%;}

This ensures that an image is scaled down for small screens. There are similar commands for large prints.

• Media queries: Media queries allow you to use various filters to detect the dimensions of the browsing device and make the design look good. This way, you can quickly determine the screen size your use depends on. All this would change the website’s layout to meet certain conditions, and you can use CSS to include them.

The most common ones are min-width, min-height, max-width, and max-height. Based on the screen’s height, width, and orientation, you can specify exactly how the design should be displayed for different users. For this, you can use various tools such as H5P, Elucidat, and Bootstrap. You can verify that your website says correctly using cross-browser testing tools.

Responsive Design Tooling

The world is evolving to a mobile-first mentality, and any website that does not adapt to this change risks falling behind. Most businesses have a solid online presence, but many need to meet today’s customer expectations because they need to optimize their websites for mobile devices. To create an effective, responsive design, you need tools to quickly and easily update your website without completely redeveloping it.

Here are some of the essential tools for Responsive Web Design:

• Gridset: Gridset is a highly customizable, easy-to-use plugin that allows designers to quickly and easily create beautiful responsive grids and embed them into their WordPress website.
• Werify: Werify is a tool for simplifying Responsive Design. It is a flexible grid system that allows designers and developers to quickly create wireframe-style mockups of websites in the browser. It’s built with CSS3, so it works on browsers that support it and is gently degraded on browsers that do not.
• Gumby 2: Gumby 2 is a new and improved version of the responsive front-end framework introduced by Gumby Framework. It improves the original CSS of Gumby and makes it more user-friendly and flexible.
• Bootstrap: Bootstrap is a powerful tool for responsive design. It is a CSS library used by many web designers and developers who want to create mobile-friendly websites. The framework includes HTML and CSS templates that can be used on any website, making it easy to create custom designs.
• Invision: Invision has long been a popular tool for web designers, and its collaboration features and design guidelines are essential for teams of all sizes. Because Invision is responsive, you can quickly adapt your designs to any screen size or orientation. This feature comes in handy when it comes to mobile-first design. Invision can help you better understand and organize your responsive workflow if you are just getting started with responsive design.

Best practices to ensure Responsive Design

Responsive Design provides flexibility in almost everything, be it text, images, or layouts. Here’s what you need to do to ensure it:

• Take a mobile-first approach, and scale your designs to mobile size to fit larger screens.
• Remember that mobile users need large buttons with more than 40 points. The design should be as considerate as your desktop versions, as requiring good-sized elements on small screens can cause confusion and cramping.
• Create fluid images and grids.
• Use scalable vector graphics (SVGs).
• Bring in three or more breakpoints.
• Provide prioritization and hide content to fit your user’s context
• Bring in a touch of minimalism.
• Apply a variety of design patterns.
• Ensure accessibility with fonts and font sizes.

Overall, responsive design can ensure an economical and robust approach. Things can get tricky if you do not approach them thoughtfully.