September 12, 2012
Responsive web design is one of the latest web buzz words. Responsive design is the web design and website development approach that allows your website to adapt to your browser size, albiet it web, tablet or mobile. Flexible grids, or responsive design, is not a new technique. Fluid markup has been around for a very long time. Clients can be lead to believe that a responsive design approach is a one stop shop for all of your device needs, but that is not always the case. In this article, we will list the pros and cons of responsive design.
Pros:
- Consistent viewing experience across all mediums.
- From a budgetary standpoint, on average responsive designs require less time to develop than native applications or optimized tablet or mobile devices.
- Solid responsive frameworks exist to help speed up development time.
Cons:
- You will get a better viewing experience through a native application or a dedicated mobile site.
- Responsive web design can take longer to design for and can require sacrifices visually.
- Responsive markup (HTML/CSS) does take longer to write. However, as we mentioned before, there are some responsive frameworks that may be able to speed up development time.
Ultimately, when determining if you need responsive design or not, ask yourself these two questions:
- Can our content be prioritized?
- Are some sections more important than others?
For some situations, you do not need to show 100% of your content via mobile. You should display the most important content first, which is why a mobile site is often needed. The excess is cut out and you can safisfy the visitors needs faster. In closing, each project is unique and there is not a clear cut answer on to whether use responsive design or not.
