Responsive Web Design Tips and Techniques

In the post below, I would like to walk you through a few tips and techniques around how to build a reliable and engaging responsive web design layout. You would have the flexibility to put into use and build your very own layout.

Here is what you can get to learn:

Hiding Irrelevant Content :: Responsive Web Design

Through this attempt, our main objective is to be able to reformat the page content so that it is able to fit on smaller screens and can also be spread on larger screens as well. To be able to optimize your pages further, it is best to hide lesser important content and highlight more important content.

You would have the ability to hide content by adding the CSS property content. In other words to be able to hide a block of content, you would need to narrow down the viewpoint as per the given width.

Collapsing Content :: Responsive Web Design

This works the other way around. So, instead of hiding a block of content for narrow viewports, you can now also collapse the content. In order to do this, simply hide all the content apart from the header and then allow the user to tap or click on the header so that the user can reveal or hide any of the content blocks. To be able to create a collapsible content block, you would need to use both CSS and JavaScript.

Scaling Images :: Responsive Web Design

Scaling images and resizing your browser can also be done with hardly any efforts and that too without messing up the web design. You can seamlessly create viewports that are greater than 480 pixels in width and the sidebar would react as it was before. Once the browser comes down to 480 pixels or lesser then the sidebar turns into a collapsible block. Similarly, images can also be scaled just like the browser. Once done, you get a clickable plus/minus button that can expand and/or collapse the content.

Our aim here is to create fluidic layouts and a compelling web design that would allow you to scale images on the page as per the width of the browser. This would permit you to retain the proportion as per the rest of the content on the existing page.

One easy way to scale an image is to add a CSS that is maximum in width and is as per the element and also provides a percentage value to the property. The browser would then make out the width of the image as a proportion of the width. This would adjust the height of the image automatically so as to maintain the image aspect ratio.

Responsive Images :: Responsive Web Design

One advantage that image scaling brings is that it ensures that these images do not take too much of space especially on smaller handsets. However, the browser still has to load the image and that too full size into it memory. This not only takes up precious memory on your mobile handset but it also unnecessarily occupies bandwidth. This can be a huge challenge on slower cellular networks.

By creating responsive images, you can easily have a high resolution image that can work on desktop browsers. And then a smaller version can be used seamlessly on mobile screens.

In addition to images, you can also resize text. This text can be resized to suit the size of your page as per the size of the browser and it can be best used on any available screen space. Remember, it is always best to use a light touch here and just make fine adjustments to the font size. If the text is made too big then it would not look subtle and people would struggle to read it.

Today, if you really wish to conquer the digital market then responsive web design or websites can make the right kind of impact.

This article is written by Clark Anderson. He has significant experience in content writing & creating responsive websites & works at Para Development. He likes to offer guidance on the latest techniques.