Why is Responsive Web Design So Important?
What is Responsive Website Design?
A webpage layout must be flexible and adaptable to different environmental contexts. A webpage takes up a defined amount of space. The shape of the space is always a rectangle. The device or the program that is displaying the webpage layout is the environment that the layout is rendered in and defines the space that the webpage will be displayed in. The webpage layout must be fluid so it can fill each environment that it is rendered in and maintain its structure and content. A responsive webpage will make the best use of all the space it is displayed in because it is adaptable, flexible, and fluid. It is fluid because it has code that asks what type of dimensions the environment it is displayed in and adjusts the layout accordingly before being displayed.
How is a Webpage Layout Flexible, Adaptable, and Fluid?
A webpage becomes fluid because predefined rules have been prescribed with computer programming code. A web developer can use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) or JavaScript (JS) to make a webpage layout flexible, adaptable, and fluid. CSS media queries are a safer bet for making a webpage layout always fluid because JS can be turned off in the browser in the settings panel. PHP is a backend programming language that gets run on the server and cannot change the layout once it is rendered in the user’s browser. One type of fluid webpage layout design is to define 3 different layouts for the same webpage that covers small, medium, and large screen sizes. A webpage layout that falls short of 640px in width is considered small. A medium size webpage layout has a width in between the range of 641px and 1007px. A layout with a width that is greater than or equal to 1008px is a large layout. The web developer can make the three different layouts as templates in HTML or PHP files. The layouts are included in the main PHP webpage file with PHP include statements and triggered with CSS media queries that target certain HTML elements with CSS selectors.