Responsive Design
So what exactly is responsiveness?
In simplest words, it is a way to make any website appear esthetic on any screen size. I used the word esthetic, because it is not always implemented, but I would definitely recommend it for any website. The easiest way to test if a website is responsive is to open up a website in question on your desktop computer, and reduce the width of the window. If things start moving and realigning on the screen in order to make all of the elements fit in nicely - you've got yourself a responsive website.Check out this demo
The last two images - tablet and phone - can be rotated.
So what is all the hype about?
Why would you want to use responsiveness? Well let's take a very quick look at the history of website framework. Back in the 90's websites were usually very plain and stretched to 100% of the screen, very much like a notepad. Later on, during mid 90s, people started putting on graphics in a very narrow left aligned table. Towards the XXI century the screen sizes grew, and so did the websites, and over the past few years, when smart mobile devices have been introduced (phones and tablets), people started building two separate versions of a website - one for desktops and one for phones. That required more work and also did not perform well on small laptop and tablet screens. Some people started building thirtiary websites, while others looked into CSS for solution and this is what they found.
What Else?
Not only does the responsiveness cover all smaller screens, but also it will cover all the larger ones too. Often times current designs are presented at the full width of 1280 pixels (that's a lot of screen size) and then are resized down to 940 pixels, which has been a common standard over the past few years and then down to horizontal tablet size, vertical tablet size, horizontal phone and vertical phone. Do all the responsive designs cover all screen sizes? Not necessarily. Sometimes a design may be very limiting and a developer can only do large sizes as they appear.
The greatest part of the Responsiveness...
It is the new thing, but it is also the thing of the future. Even if people will start viewing all the websites on huge TV screens with fine font, there will be others who would want to be able to see it on their phone (or watch for that matter). So, if you're planning on sticking around with your web design, you should consider to implement Responsiveness to allow all users on all devices the same great experience.