What Is Responsive Design Computer Science Essay

Abstract:One of the revolutionary and newest web design trend developing at this time is responsive web design. We have seen last couple of years the growth of handheld devices like smartphone, tablet and other gadgets in.According to research and statistics sales of tablet and smartphone is take over desktop and notebook in 2012, this growth is continue through next some years. increasing more consumers adopt mobile internet technologies in the coming years, those increase people are consume online web content from various devices like smartphones, tablets, and other connected devices. Therefore each marketing or technical manager need to know about this web design trend, and this is right time to adopt this approach for growth of your business. Fixed screen size website design is no longer a greatthis time. Responsive Web Design is an approach to web design in which a site is built to deliver an ideal viewing experience, easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling across a wide range of devices like desktop, notebook, tablet, smart phones and other gadgets.

Keywords: breakpoint, flexible image, fluid layout, html, media queries, responsive design, smart phones, tablets, viewport, web design.

What is responsive design?

Your website looks great on the desktop screen but may not be true for every size of scree or display.Once you have beendeveloped the responsivedesign, the website will look decent and readable on every size of scree or display, not just for desktop.

The basic idea behind responsive design is that a website should be gracefully “respond to ” every size of scree or display of devices like smartphone, tablet, notebook or any size desktop monitor.

The term responsive design was invented by Ethan Marcotte who identifies three fundamental techniques for responsive design fluid grids, media queries and flexible images & media.

There are three basic technologies HTML, CSS & JavaScript behind responsive design. And fundamental techniques for responsive design fluid grids for flexible layouts, media queries to help you adapt content to specific screen sizes, and flexible images and media that respond to changes in screen sizes as well.

Why responsive design?

We have seen last couple of years an explosion of handheld devices beating the marketincluding tablets, e-readers, and smartphones, each consuming its own screen resolutions, orientations, and layouts. As this growth is continue through next some years, people expect to online web content an ideal viewing experience, easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizingand scrolling across a devices like tablet, smart phones and other gadgets and responsive web design will persevere and continue to expand.

According to the latest NPD Display Search figures, tablet shipments in 2016 will top 35 Crores units, putting them ahead of notebook shipments for the first time everyou can see from below given chart.

In survey on internet-enabled smartphones in India Mid 2012 probable that the number of internet-enabled smartphones in India would reach 2.5 Crores in 2012, which is more than double of 2011 and five time more 5.8 Crores in 2013 growth is continues through 2016you can see from below given chart.

According to CyberMediaresearch India’s tablet PC market is expected double to around six million units in 2013, firm CyberMedia

From Microsoft Tag mobile internet usage is projected to overtake desktop internet usage by 2014 (Source: Microsoft Tag)

Source: NPD Display Search Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report

From above specified research and statistics shown the coming next era will be handheld devices like smartphone, tablet and other gadgets. So you should developed online contain must be responsive and site is constructed to provide anoptimal viewing experience, easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, slating, and scrolling across a wide range of devices. Thus responsive design sign is much needed in this time.

Fluid grids layout

Fluid grids layout is the first technique behind responsive design. Fluid Grid layouts allow you to use media queries to determine the break points where a site begins to resize the different elements, such as headers, images, etc. Fluid Grid Layout enables you to specify the look of your site across different devices. You can adopt the structure of your site for desktop screens, for tablets, and for smaller mobile devices.

Fixed-width layout is constructed by specific pixel measurement, this type of layout commonly used for web design. fluid grid layout is constructed by percentage,insteadof pixel. How fluid grid layout is work against fixed-width layout we can understand this side by side example

Fixed Layout css by example

Fluid Layout css by example

div

{

width: 900px;

}

div

{

width: 96%;

}

(if parent is 1000px wide)

100 / 1000 = .1

You have to calculate the proportions for each page element, you must divide the target element by its context. First you should create a high fidelity model in a pixel based imaged editor, like Photoshop or Illustrator.Then you can measure a page element and divide it by the full width of the page. In order to calculate the extents for each page element, you must divide the target element by its context can be calculate with this formula given below:

target / context = result

How this formula used, we can understand by this example

body {

font: normal 100%;

}

With 100% font size all elements in our web page relative to the browser’s default font size which is normally 16px

Let us assume the body default font size to be 16px, we can apply such font-size on this formula. Wehave to divide the targetvalue (32px) by the font-size of its container (16px):

32 ÷ 16 = 2

So header H1 is two time of its default body font. We can denoted by em (1em is equal to the current font size), we can put into our css.

h1 {

font-family: font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;

font-size: 2em; /* 32px / 16px = 2em */

}

Fluid grids is the very key part of building a responsive design. When the width of the browser becomes too small, the design can start to harshly breakdown. This problem is solved by another technique of responsive design is known as media queries.

Before going onmedia querieslet us see what is breakpoint? And viewport?

A breakpoint indicates the moment your layout changes from one layout to another, and is generallygenerated by the width of a screen.

Let us sight below example. When I resize the screen, you can see the containing block changes both when the viewport reaches a certain size.The screen sizes are based on the typical screen sizes for smartphones, tablets, notebook and desktop devices.While many layouts will have more than these four basic breakpoints, almost all responsive designs will feature some combination of those four screen size ranges.This means that one of the first things that you need to do when planning a responsive design is define the breakpoints for your layout.Here you see a list of the most common breakpoints.Mobile styles will target any screen smaller than 480 pixels wide, while tablet styles will usually target screens between 481 and 768 pixels, tablet screen (wide)between 768 pixelsand 960pixels. Desktop styles, will target any screen wider than 960 pixels.

Source: http://dustycartridge.com/

Viewport

A viewport is the area in which your web page is displayed. The default viewport width on Mobile browser is 980px which is support to design layout for desktop. When you are creating a responsive web design for mobile or laptop or other device you want the viewport to be equal to the physical width of your device. That is s where the convenient device-width property comes into play. device-width is the width of your device in pixels.

You can use the following viewport tag:

<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width”>

If your device-width is 320px then your viewport’s width has now been set to 320px. That means if your website’s layout is wider than 320px then a portion of your layout will not be visible within the mobile device’s viewport

Media Queries

A media query contains of a media type and as a minimum one expression that bounds the style sheets’ possibility by using media features include width, height, max-width, max-height, device-height, orientation, aspect-ratio, resolution and more

W3C improved in CSS3, media queries let the performance of content be tailor-made to a specific range of output devices without having to change the content itself.

Media queries help you deliver contents with different styles adapted to devices like desktop, notebook, tablet, smartphone and all other gadgets with different screen size How to implement media queries,

The general form of a media query is,

@media [not|only] type [and] (expr)

{rules

}

How media queries work for different screen size understand by following example

@media only screen and (min-width: 320px) { /* MOBILE PORTRAIT */

Some code …….

}

@media only screen and (min-width: 480px) { /* MOBILE LANDSCAPE */

Some code …….

}

@media only screen and (min-width: 600px) { /* SMALL TABLET */

Some code …….

}

@media only screen and (min-width: 768px) { /* TABLET/NETBOOK */

Some code …….

}

@media only screen and (min-width: 1024px) { /* LANDSCAPE TABLET/NETBOOK/LAPTOP */

Some code …….

}

@media only screen and (min-width: 1280px) { /* DESKTOP */

Some code …….

}

@media only screen and (min-width: 1400px) { /* WIDESCREEN */

Some code …….

}

@media print { /* PRINT */

Some code …….

}

With CSS media queries, you can easily target particular screen sizes and provide excellent user experience on any type of browser or device is used to visit your website. These technique is the center of responsive design, which is a developing responsive and device friendly web design and development experience. Visitors has like to browsing your website on tablets, phones, and e-readers. They would like to visit more your website.

Responsive graphics and other media

Using fluid layout ensure that screen size or orientation change and contain will reflow or reconfigure along with it. That work seamlessly for contain like text which naturally reflows along with its containing element. But what about contain that is by default defined by fixed size, such as graphics or other media?

An image designed for a large desktop monitor is unlikely to fit into a layout designed for a 320-pixel-wide smartphone. Likewise, images designed to accompany content on a mobile screen would probably look like thumbnails when viewed within desktop layouts. This means that in the best of circumstances, these images will look out of context and in many cases, will break your carefully crafted responsive layouts. This problem underscores how important it is to find ways to make images and other media responsive. The solution is pretty simple: just replace the fixed dimensions with relative measurements or percentages and then boom, flexible responsive images. In example CSS-driven approach. Namely, all modern browsers get our max-width constraint.

Example 1.2 when you are decrees screen size image or other media like video or flash object also decrees respectively

img,embed,object,video

{ max-width: 100%;

}

Internet Explorer 6 and below don’t support the max-width property. But in a separate IE6-specific style sheet, I’ll include the following:

img,embed, object,video

{ width: 100%;

}

To utilize JavaScript or server-side scripting to examine the page, determine the context, and then serve the appropriate image. File, and add a query string on any image that requires a larger desktop version of that image. The script will then parse the page and replace the smaller images with the larger ones when they are appropriate. There are many solutions like this one that have been developed over the last couple of years, and most of them share this basic approach have script determine the context, then parse the page and serve the appropriate images work within responsive designs.

In conclusion

This article will help you to know about responsive web design and how to implement its techniques in field of web design. Also described how you can provide an optimal user experience across a wide range of devices like desktop, notebook, tablet, smart phones and other gadgets.This article also provide an idea, how marketing manager or businessman adapting this techniques of responsive web design to develop their sites. Responsive Web Design is a great solution for website that provides great, user experience with the wide variety of resolutions.