During the weekend, I worked a charity site for the foundation called Fundacion Amor Por Los Animalitos Abandonados which protects street dogs and cats and helps them get adopted and neutered. This site’s content is perfect for a responsive web design implementation.
I have to say that i REALLY LOVE responsive web design & development. What does responsive web development mean? Well, it means that your website will adapt to the screen in which it is viewed by the user. When the site is viewed on a computer it can look one way (the original and “desktop” way), when it is viewed in your ipad or tablet another way, when viewed on my Gallaxy S3 another way, when viewed on iphone another way and so on depending on the screen width size of the user’s device (not the brand or model of your phone, just the screensize). And what this means is that your site will “respond” to the screensize width and move the content to fit the screen correctly. You can also target screen orientation and other options.
Different styles and designs can be applied to the website and this opens a lot of doors for innovation in my opinion. Web apps and websites can show contents in a better way improving user experience (desktop and mobile) and saving bandwidth. It’s not only about laying correctly and different the elements on a website, it’s also about creating specific and targeted designs for different devices like Ipad/tablets or phones like Iphone and Android phones. This is very cool. OTHER BENEFITS!? You have one single code base and you can deploy a website that will even adapt to future phones with any screen or orientation (this saves money! there are too many phones and brands). One thing that I find interesting about responsive web design is that you can also show and hide content depending on the device. You can also use libraries like RWD Retrofit to allow an existing “desktop site” to co-exist with a “responsive site”.
Responsive web design might sound fancy but it is very beneficial to your website and your users and will save you money in the long run to develop your website and web application like this 🙂
The development part is ready and I used custom post types in WordPress to publish posts with Adoption animal information that will be useful, hopefully all animals can find a home. The design of this site is ongoing but luckily the adaptive part and strategy is ready 😉 This technology is not new but it has been very popular this 2012 with the wide spread use of smart phones and tablets, that’s why more and more and more sites are being built or adapted with responsive web design.
Adaptive web design is all about content because like the old saying says “Content is King” … and since content is king you have to give the users the content in best way depending on the context of the device they are using…desktop, mobile, etc.