Mobile-web-designer1074018
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Responsive Web Design (RWD) essentially indicates that a web site is crafted to use Cascading Style Sheets 3 media queries, an extension of the @media rule[1], with fluid proportion-based grids (which use percentages and EMs instead of pixels) , to adapt the layout to the viewing environment, and probably also use flexible images. As a result, users across a broad range of devices and browsers will have access to a single source of content, laid out so as to be easy to read and navigate with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling.
"Mobile First" and "Progressive Enhancement/Unobtrusive JavaScript" (strategies for when a new site design is being considered) are related concepts that predated RWD: browsers of basic mobile phones do not understand media queries or Javascript, and it is wise to create a basic web site then enhance it for smart phones and PCs � rather than attempt "graceful degradation" to try to degrade a complex, image-heavy site to work on the most basic mobile phones. Browser detection and mobile device detection are two ways of deducing if Javascript and certain HTML and CSS features are supported, however Javascript libraries like Modernizr, jQuery, and jQuery Mobile that directly test for features/user agents are also popular.
Luke Wroblewski has summarized some of the RWD and mobile design challenges, and created a catalog of multi-device layout patterns. He suggests that, compared with a simple RWD approach, Device Experience or RESS approaches can provide a user experience that is better optimized for mobile devices. Server-side implementation of dynamic stylesheet languages like Sass can be part of such an approach, and so can available mobile website builder tools.
One problem for RWD is that advertisements are not fluid. But search advertising and display advertising support specific device platform targeting and different advertisement size formats for desktop, smartphone, and basic mobile devices, and different landing page URLs can be used for different platforms. So this can be part of a solution. It seems wise to compare "one-site RWD", "same site, with separate mobile URL", and "separate mobile site" approaches.
Ethan Marcotte coined the term Responsive Web Design (RWD) in his article in A List Apart. He describes the theory and practice of responsive web design in his brief 2011 book on the subject. .net Magazine chose Responsive Design as #2 on its list of Top Web Design Trends for 2012 (Progressive Enhancement was #1), and listed 20 of Ethan Marcotte's favorite responsive sites.
