Responsive Web Design is without a doubt one of the Web's biggest buzzwords for 2012. The Web is changing fast and even though the importance of CMSs addressing mobile devices was well predicted, I suspect even the tech gurus are surprised at the current growth rate of smartphones. If you don't know it by now, there is a lot of pressure on web designers and site builders to ensure that their client's websites are responding to the changing Internet. A website should look good no matter how it is being displayed, whether that site is being viewed on a desktop, cell phone, tablet, or whatever new device the Ghost of Steve Jobs brings us.
Responsive Web design is the approach where design and development of a website should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. The challenge though is that while everyone talks about Responsive Web Design, very few people are actually talking about the steps necessary for allowing your site to become responsive. This is why I enjoyed reading the article written by Abhijeet Chavan, CTO for Urban Insight, on Prototyping Responsive Websites.
Websites being built today need to be accessible on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. I will outline a prototyping process that we are experimenting with to efficiently create designs for responsive websites.
Increasingly, a website may be likely to be accessed using a mobile device as it is using a desktop or laptop computer. And more users are now only using mobile devices to access websites. Building websites that adapt to different devices is called responsive web design. I will outline a prototyping process that we are experimenting with to efficiently create responsive websites.
Even if you don't consider yourself a techy, if you have any vested interest in a CMS you still need to understand the workflow involved in getting your site ready for the mobile era. So please, go ahead and read the article referenced above. I think the article is a good start of a conversation we all need to have on the future design of our websites, whether you're a developer, site owner, or client. The author promises that in Part 2, he'll be discussing the tools and techniques he uses and how this process works in practice.
Also, a Google search also brought me this Smashing Magazine article on responsive Web design: Responsive Web Design: What It Is and How To Use It. Perhaps this article might steal away Mr. Chavan's thunder above, but I think not. There is a lot that goes into building a responsive website, and the more knowledge we have the greater ability we will all have in staying relevant in this new mobile era.