Everyone is asking for a website that will look good and function across a variety of devices including a large computer screen, a laptop, an ipad (vertical and horizontal), all the way down to your smart phone. This is called Responsive Web Design. Responsive web design is act of developing a website that morphs to fit the device its being viewed on. Here’s some Q and A courtesy of Linkweb.ca and some great examples of Responsive WordPress themes if you are thing of updating your site. 🙂
How does it differ from having a mobile website?
A mobile website is designed and developed to be separate from your company’s main website and is created specifically for mobile phones. A responsive website reshapes itself based on the size of the device its being viewed on and can be optimized for desktop computers and various sizes of tables and mobile phones.
How does responsive design work?
From a development perspective, rules are set for most sections and objects on a page for various device widths. These objects can be resized, move to another section of the page or hidden allowing appropriate content to be displayed in the most optimal place on a page.
Mobile phones and tablets display my site, why bother?
Most websites are designed for large computer screens and as such have large graphics that make the content more appealing. Mobile phones and tablets resize all of the content to make it fit, but in doing so decrease the size of fonts making it more difficult to read. Responsive web design allows us to control the size of fonts and image sizes separately for each browser size so graphics to not take up as much space and fonts appear larger and are more readable on smaller devices.
What else can responsive design do?
With the ability to display content differently based on the device size, we have the ability to display content in a format that best suits the device. For example, a large site may contain many pages that are irrelevant to someone on a mobile phone. A mobile user is most likely more interesed in finding your phone number, finding your location, or filling out a simple contact form. These options can be made more prominant on a mobile device than on a tablet or desktop computer. Other less important items can be completely hidden/removed if they take up precious space to avoid scrolling.
My 5 Favorite Responsive WordPress Themes!
1. I love this one by GraphPaperPress and I actually purchased it and intended to use it for NextPage but it just wasn’t working out. It really needs some great photos or artwork to work with the minimalist style. But it a great way to demo responsive web design, which is not always but works best in a grid layout. See Demo.
2. EvoLve Pro – This is an updated version of my theme, maybe by the time you read this I will have updated to this responsive version. Love the home page options for these premium themes from theme4press.com. Check out EvoLve.
3. Another responsive theme from theme4press.com is Funtasy. Love the built in photo gallery and the shortcodes, really makes adding the finishing touches easy. Check out Funtasy.
4. Can’t wait to work with this new responsive them from organicthemes.com. Great for an individual, artist or musician but you really have to see the demo to see all the features.
5. Lastly, another responsive design from organicthemes.com. Fabulous full with home page slider and I especially love, love, love the short codes that even include built in modal boxs (pop-ups). xxoo Take a look
