Responsive Web Design: A challenge worth to Accept

                     

Usages of smart phones and tablets have shifted the status of web design from normal to advance. Today, responsive web designs have come into existence because of the increasing demand of smart phones and tablets. Most of us have browsed the numerous websites onto the traditional desktop or handy laptops.

The big screen gives a user plenty of room to explore the website and its features on the landing page itself.

Now, What if a user browses the same website on his or her smart phone or tab?

Most often such users either get irritated with the distorted look of the website or feel lost due to inefficient navigation.

Responsive websites gives leisure to their users to use the website in the most comfortable and user friendly way, without hampering the colors, styles or textures of the websites on the various smart phones or tabs. The page layout easily settles onto the various screen sizes of the device and maintains its resolution. The pages are well optimized and the user can navigate easily on to various pages of the websites.

Recommended Reading - Making your desktop design - finger friendly?

What makes the responsive websites so unique?

The first are the elements such as fluid grids, CSS3, media queries and device detections that help in designing the responsive websites, while next are the factors that made it favorite from the designer’s point of view i.e. low maintenance, high usability, quick loading time, brand consistency, and a single web link.

Having equipped with all the building components and benefiting factorials, designers have to still face many challenges in launching the successful responsive websites.

Influencing the Clients

The foremost hurdle the designers have to face is to convince their clients for a responsive website. Earlier, designer used to go through various steps for designing a website for desktops or laptops, which in the end showed the pixel perfect display. Easy for clients to understand, responsive websites work on fluid girds and densities (dpi) i.e it is a fluid process and lacks visual stage. However, the smart move is to explain their working to their clients, rather than focusing on its stages.

Time Consuming

Developing a responsive website is a tedious job. The normal websites for the laptop are far easier to develop and require less brainstorming. For responsive websites designers have to start with strategies and have to carefully select the flexible grid layouts, media queries, sizing of images, and contents for various screen size. The task becomes even tougher when the projects turn out to convert the existing website into the responsive web.

Prioritizing the content

The screen sizes of the devices widely affect the content of the websites. Let’s say, there is a website that deals with property. When a user lands on to the landing page of the website on the desktop, he has wide options of different tabs; links and section to enter id and password. Imagine the same user opening the website on the mobile phones. They hardly bother about other stuff but directly wish to login to the website. This example clearly depicts that designer have to pick vital contents and use them as key to target their users.

Media Queries Compatibility

One of the key elements of responsive web is the media queries that helps to optimize the page displayed on the different screen sizes. They help to determine the screen size and display impressive layout along with the style of the page. The biggest challenge for developer is that most of the browsers do not support media queries. Most of the browsers which have explorer version 8 or other previous versions, simply fails to detect media queries resulting in blank display. There are solutions for particular challenges, so the developers either choose the internet conditional comments to set special rules on older versions of explorer, or use various scripts designed to support media queries.

Trimming Emotions

Images provide emotions to the website and trimming of emotions from the website, gives a plain look. Designers are often required to condense the images in such a way for different screen sizes, that the website does not lose the charm. Most of the customers get used to the image that they recognize the website linking it with their favorite image or cartoon, and feel homely. Trying resizing the image in context to the content, in a way saves the image from being sacrificed.

Simplicity in Navigation

Most often the users see the navigation section either on the top of the web, or across the multi layered drop down menus. The mobile phones do not have freedom of space and deciding the navigation section is a tricky job. The navigation section totally depends on the contents and the information the designer wish to convey to the users. Narrowing down the list of menu and combining it with creative designs in such a way that the navigation sections become a pleasurable experience without consuming lot of space on the screen, is a task in its self.

Rigorous Testing

Testing the design numerous times before the designer wish to launch the responsive website, is extremely important. Here, testing does not refer to testing the website on the desktop or a smart phone, but to test on all the devices on which the responsive website can be used. If the designer is short on the devices then, he has to look out for the agencies that can perform such testing. The testing shows all the pros and cons of the website, so that the designer can easily fix the problems before hand.

There are lots of challenges and issues in developing responsive websites, but for the betterment of the website and customer happiness, these challenges are worth to be accepted.

About Author:

Mark Wilston is a Content Writer and marketing professional working with PixelCrayons, a reputed Custom web design & development company India offering offshore cms, ecommerce and mobile apps development services. For more information about PixelCrayons, visit at http://www.pixelcrayons.com/