It seems this word is being tossed around all over the place these days. Just yesterday I got a call about my best practices for building a mobile website. So here it is: In simplest terms, a responsive website is a website that responds to the size of the device or browser you are using.
Let’s look at some examples. Visit www.bostonglobe.com. You’ll see a standard magazine style layout with three columns and headers that are easy to skim. Now drag the browser window so it’s a bit narrower. See how the content moves? Font sizes get smaller and the columns adjust to the new size. Drag it even further. Eventually you will have two columns instead of three, which is similar to a tablet sized layout. Drag it to the size of a phone screen and you have one column. The website is built to respond to the size of the device or browser. Obviously you won’t be manually forcing this on a regular basis but the idea is that the content is rearranged to fit the screen you are using.
Now most users will never even know that this happened. But they will know if a website looks bad or is hard to use. A poorly designed website is the quickest way to alienate clientele and offend users. Studies show that up to 17% of users browse the web primarily on their mobile phone. The mobile platform can not be forgotten!
