When you’re looking at websites on your phone, some translate easily and look great. Others hold their form and have been designed for larger monitors than the tablet or smartphone screen. They can be almost impossible to read from an iPhone and you’ll find yourself constantly spreading your fingers to make the site bigger to tap a navigation link or pushing the site around to find what you’re looking for on the page.
When designing and developing a website, typically you’ll be looking at it during work… on your desktop or a laptop. But don’t forget that more and more people are viewing from their mobile phone or table. You’re going to want a website that can adjust to the device. For example, if you’re thinking about designing a website that could be as visually stunning as something you could see if you click here for design tutorials, you’re also going to want to make sure complex looking design elements will also work well on mobile devices of all kinds. Of course, this adds more aspects to designing a website, but more and more people browsing the internet, are doing so on various mobile devices, meaning designing for mobile is now a necessity.
The difference is known as “Responsive”, meaning that the programming responds to the device that is viewing the site. Large desktop monitors still see all photos, headers and content. But tablets and smart phones scale down the website and eliminate some of the navigation, headers and extra pieces.
The first photo shows a website that has responded to the smartphone size. The second photo is the same website from the same URL address but is sized for a desktop monitor.
While my company’s website www.resources-results.com has been switched to a responsive design, this blog, Branding & Marketing is still in a fixed format of Thesis 1.83.
I haven’t decided if I’m going to go Thesis 2.0 or venture into another theme. Those of you who have looked into other responsive themes, what are your favorites. Any former Thesis users who love love love their new responsive theme? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
