What is the Current State of Responsive Web Design?

When you're surfing the web, you'll notice that whenever you change the size of the window, the website adjusts itself to the sizing. Why? Because these websites are using a responsive web design. Webmasters are realizing the importance of providing fast and convenient browsing experiences for their users. They want the same exact features, design, and formatting when their users are viewing a mobile version of the website too. That being said, it’s safe to say that responsive web design has come a very long way. Innovations that wowed us a couple of months ago are now among the most trivial. Whether we like it or not, industry leaders are continuously improving these elements to provide a better experience for users. Let’s have a closer look at some of the main capabilities responsive web design can do today.

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Visual Assets

High-density screens with pixel ratios above two have become incredibly common. In responsive web design, the way images are being handled is vital. When images are displayed on a high-density screen, even the most conventionally-sized images may seem pixelated. Larger images may have a greater impact on loading speeds, particularly on mobile devices that can survive without a high-pixel image. To cope with this issue, there are several experimental techniques available. As an alternative, developers can make use of other formats, such as progressive JPEG.

In any digital picture or any motion picture, the whole image is presented as a lattice of small square pixels. Pixel count is basically the height to width ratio calculation of any digital image. However, pixels of a digital image and that of any motion picture may vary, and are related through Pixel aspect ratio.

A Progressive JPEG can be defined as the image made through JPEG set of compression algorithm concept. Progressive JPEG is more efficient in terms of delivering a picture at slower connections like a modem. It’s handiness can’t be realized too much with faster connectivity.

Rearranged Content Without Interfering with HTML

We must admit that fluid grids made from inline blocks and floats have to be reworked. Dealing with layout and at the same time rearranging blocks in mobile mode without using JavaScript is a real nightmare. This has a great deal of importance on websites made with a CMS. Web designers can interfere with very page’s HTML. Can we make improvements?

There are certain web designing frameworks or tools like fluid grids that are intuitive enough. However, these can even be revamped. While making the sites suitable for mobile platforms, the fundamental languages for web designing, like Javascript still hold a lot of importance. It is unavoidable. Anyone can go through the codes of a page and make some tweaks. Things need to be even more enhanced on these aspects.

One of the finest ways to have a better outcome is to go with the models compatible with browsers on mobile and PC screens. CSS box layout model is a fine example of the above. The box structure and pattern can be modified in accordance with your need as well. It lets the coders to rearrange your way without taking the help of any codes.

Adaptive Typography

A website’s layout depends on the content. CSS3 has recently introduced a font unit which can be of great assistance for responsive typography known as the ‘rem unit’. Although fonts that are calculated in ‘rem units’ feature a length that is relative to the parents, they depend on font sizes that belong to the root element. In this case, for a website to feature a responsive design, the designer has to change the sizes of the font by changing the size of the font specified in that HTML element.

Basically, rem unit or root em offers a method of defining lengths as the fractional representation of font size of the root element. In simple words, it can be understood as the font size of the html element.

This is very useful in terms of dealing with the fundamental font sizing tasks. The best part about it is its flexible nature. It works well with all sorts of contemporary browsers. It lets the font size, and other characteristics to be set against the root element. Especially, in case of mobile or tablet platforms, the rem units work better.

Working with Other Complex Content

Web designers are slowly, but surely getting better at coping with text and images in responsive layouts. However, there are other issues that have to be fixed, such as handling forms on a website that works with responsive web design. Managing forms, particularly long ones is rather challenging in responsive web design. The lengthier the form the most challenging it will be to make it adapt to smaller devices.

It’s not that difficult to understand the physical adaptation provided that the web designer can place the elements of the form into a sole column expanding the inputs to the full width on the screen. However it’s still not enough to make the forms visually appealing. They have to be easy-to-use on mobile. To make his happen, you are advised to ditch textual inputs and go for radio buttons, check boxes, and pick drop down menus when feasible.

Sometime in the future, brand new HTML5 input forms and attributes will greatly help web designers develop improved forms without having to use JavaScript. For instance, the “required attribute” might be used to render feedback concerning a particular field. Sadly, right now this kind of support is poor and it requires a lot of improvements.

Having an interactive website design should be your main priority in achieving the dream success in internet marketing. The importance of a responsive site can be well evident when you're going through popular tools, like Google Analytics. According to the statistics, the users on mobile or tablet platform have reached well beyond 45%, which is expected and quite certain to be higher in coming future as well. If your site is not responsive enough for the smaller screen versions, then the extent of loss is well imaginable.

For a designer, the parts like media queries, grids, navigation, and links have to be made more responsive, while keeping the online marketing strategies in mind. If you are already having a site and it hasn't been made responsive yet, then it's better to shed a few bucks for an improved website than risking the loss of sales!